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  • Title: Impact of trends in resources, environment and development on demographic prospects.
    Author: Keyfitz N.
    Journal: Popul Bull UN; 1984; (16):1-15. PubMed ID: 12266658.
    Abstract:
    This paper addresses the impact of trends in resources, environment and development on demographic prospects by investigating whether ecological considerations can improve the accuracy of population projections. It identifies the degree to which population is resources-determined. The basic classic relationship that resources determine population is increasingly inapplicable as the level of technology rises and institutions are formed. The major defect in attmepts to relate population directly to land and energy flow is that they suppose all other factors remain constant. If, however, the increase of population on the fixed land itself pushes technology, and that in turn makes it possible for a larger population to live on the same land, the attempt to express population as a pure function of land is entirely frustrated. Given a challenge that is severe but not overwhelming, a natural environment that is difficult but not impossible, plus a culture that builds responsiveness into its children in each generation, the inert adjustment of population numbers to food supplies seems to give way to the active adjustment of food supplies to population. Those who need the most because of their poverty are the ones who advance the least. Government is another intermediate agent between the environment that would limit population and the population itself. It acts as an agent of adaptation of population to land. The emergence of the world grain market, which has detached individuals from dependence on their local ecological base, has lifted the resource constraint. A method to improve the accuracy of population projections is proposed, based on projecting the condition of resources and the environment, followed by the intermediate variables of technology and institutions for a given future time. Population projection for each year to that date would be done by interpolation, rather than by extrapolation. Birth control, the effect of urbanization and the impact of development on population are examined.
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