Some countries - like Philippines, Ethiopia, India - are facing growing populations. Though their economies are also growing, their population growth rates are very high. What is the likely future - in 50-100 years - of these countries socio-economically, politico-militarily, and demographically?
In case high population growth rates is a reflection of insecurity and poverty then it is required to make people's lives more secure (e.g. social security, old age pensions) and to reduce poverty. India has been expericencing high economic growth for the past 20 years. Poverty and also population growth rates have declined, but the country still has the highest numers of poor anywhere in the world. This might indicate that economic growth was distributed rather unequally, meaning that only some sections of India's society enefitted from it, leaving especially people living in the rural periphery excluded. The way forward would be to make economic growth more inclusive and to ensure that it is not only concentrated on (urban) middle classes. Other than in the Philippines in India the influence of the military on politics is comparatively low, but of course huge populations, especially huge well educated populations and relatively small labour markets to absorb them are huge challenges. I feel that the most important question is how these people can secure sustainable livelihoods that enbale them to live their lives in dignity.
Some recent publications that touch on the issues:
Bedprakas SyamRoy (auth.) 2017
India's Journey Towards Sustainable Population. Springer
Prakash Kashwan 2017
Studies in comparative energy and environmental politics
Democracy in the woods: environmental conservation and social justice in India, Tanzania, and Mexico [1 ed.] Oxford University Press
Sanghmitra S. Acharya, Sucharita Sen, Milap Punia, Sunita Reddy (eds.) 2017 Marginalization in Globalizing Delhi: Issues of Land, Livelihoods and Health [1 ed.] Springer
S. Irudaya Rajan, Gayathri Balagopal (eds.) 2017
Elderly Care in India: Societal and State Responses [1 ed.] Springer
Joshi, Vijay 2017
India's long road : the search for prosperity [1 ed.] OUP
Ninan, T. N 2017
Turn of the tortoise : the challenge and promise of India's future [1 ed.], OUP
Meenakshi Rajeev, B. P. Vani (auth.) 2017
Financial Access of the Urban Poor in India: A Story of Exclusion [1 ed.]. SpringerBriefs in Economics
Zakir Husain, Mousumi Dutta (auth.) 2017
Fertility Control in a Risk Society: Analysing Contraception Choice of Urban Elites in India [1 ed.]. SpringerBriefs in Population Studies
What is the future for the Philippine nation with its present exploding population? Only a magician fortune-teller would attempt to answer this question. Humans have lived in the Philippine Islands for at least 25,000 years. (Some recent publications estimate over 60 tya.) Older sources estimate that the total population on Spanish arrival was less than one million. Recently, author Linda A. Newson stated in her excellent book (Conquest and pestilence in the early Spanish Philippines (U of Hawaii Press 2009) that the population was around 1.3 million in 1600. We know that the national pop in 1900 was ~8 million. When my wife and I moved to the Philippines in 1962 the population had exploded to 27 million. That's a huge jump in just 60 years! But the jump has been more explosive since 1962, with a pop today of 103 million! (PRB). I lived in the Philippines from 1962 to 2010. I've watched this explosion from our once-remote home in northern Aurora Province and southern Isabela. We were studying the population all those decades of the indigenous Agta (Dumagat Negrito) people then living in n. Aurora. In the 1960s the 600 Casiguran Agta lived in a hilly forest of some 700 km2, with some 5,000 non-Agta Tagalog farmers living down in the Cas. valley. Today (2010) the non-Agta population numbers over 50,000, outnumbering the now-deforested hills, and now outnumbering the 600 Agta today by a ratio of 80 to 1. If the Philippine population continues to explode at this rate, I fear something may "break." What, when, and how might this happen? Civil war? Famine? Epidemic disease? Hard to say. Hopefully, the "Demographic Transition" will kick-in before the national population size passes its carrying capacity to live on their shrinking islands. Thomas Headland (Senior Anthropology Consultant, SIL International, Dallas, Texas, USA) 8-28-2017
Dear Tom and Eberhard,
Thank you very much for these responses. Highly informative. Tom: the Philippines seems to be experiencing magic population-growth rates! Possibly it will be 200m in 50 years! Hard questions to think about, now, but I hope development will slow down the rate somehow. Will keep thinking harder about this.
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