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As the world's population nears six billion, the general consensus amongst some experts and the general public is that already there are too many people on the planet. However, some commentators have recently argued that the problem with poverty is not OVERPOPULATION, but that there aren't enough people.

Indeed, they argue that Africa is underdeveloped precisely because it is underpopulated. The argument goes as follows...."How can one justify building schools, hospitals or roads if there are not enough people to support them? And if there are more people, there will be more ideas, which in turn will lead to better technology and an improved quality of life. In the West, every indicator of quality of life has improved as the population has grown." (C4-7.12.97)

Over the last 35 years, the population of the Earth has doubled.

Next year it will expand by 86 million people - that's three babies a

Today there are almost six billion people in the world, and SOME environmentalists argue that:

4.- that this situation is rapidly becoming unsustainable.

For example, Professor Norman Myers, of Green College, Oxford, puts the optimum world population at two billion or less. Further population growth over the next few decades, it's argued, will be disastrous.

Brent Blackwelder, Chairman of Friends of the Earth, agrees,

arguing that many of the world's conflicts are caused by scarcity of

The Greens say that the population problem is worst in the Third

World - 'People live longer, child mortality is lower....

What's more, according to the Greens, if we don't manage to stem

population growth in the Third World it won't be just the

environment that suffers. There will be mass starvation.

Much of the preoccupation with "population and over-population" can be traced back to the 1972 Stockholm Conference which took place at the end of two decades in which...

1.- the world's population soared from 2.5 billion to 3.7 billion - the most rapid growth rate in human numbers ever experienced.

2.- Population doubling times for some developing countries were falling below 20 years and some scientists and policy makers in developed countries expressed fears that "the population explosion", if not controlled through vigorous population programmes, would lead to mass starvation and societal breakdown.

This view was largely rejected by the Governments of developing countries, and the population issue proved too sensitive even to be included in the Stockholm agenda.

Subsequent international population conferences (Bucharest 1974, Mexico

1984 and Cairo 1994) charted the gradual emergence of a more consensual

approach to the population issue. By the early 1980s, the "North" had largely

accepted the "Southern" argument that population policies should be set more

broadly in the context of socio-economic development.

Concerns over possible environmental limits to population growth - focusing successively on:

deforestation, energy, water and climate change were increasingly debated in scientific and policy communities. These linkages between population

and environment slowly became more prominent at the international level:

Our Common Future (1987) and Agenda 21 (1992) both explicitly discussed population issues in relation to sustainable development.

In 25 years, the population debate has evolved dramatically from a

narrow focus on population size and growth rates to a more integrated agenda

embracing:

Policy makers increasingly acknowledge these interlinkages between demographics, environment and economy. At the same time, there is still heated controversy over whether the world's population is on an unsustainable trajectory or not.

From the Western viewpoint the preoccupation with unsustainable pop. growth

has been the driving force behind the attempts at population control throughout the LDCs.

Western measures to control population in Africa have been proven highly controversial. For example, US AID has this year given Kenya $13.5 million for family planning, compared to $4 million in humanitarian assistance. One environmental organisation is even suggesting withholding food aid to Africa in order to keep numbers down - letting people starve, in other words.

However, demographic developments over the past decade or so, do not seem to support much of the "popular fear" of a planet rendered unsustainable due to "population explosion...."

1.- Overall, the annual growth rate in the world's population has declined

from a high of just over 2 per cent in the 1960s to 1.48 per cent in the

2.- The number of people added to the world's population each year (the annual increment) has risen steadily from 47 million in 1950, but is now thought to have peaked at around 81 million in 1995, with population stabilization (an annual increment of 0) expected in 2050.

3.- The population growth rate has fallen more swiftly than demographers expected, because of a faster fertility decline than was previously anticipated. The most recent (1996) United Nations population projections show a significant downward revision of both estimated historical population growth and the size of the world's future population.

The combination of declining fertility and accelerating population

growth is, in part, the result of previously accumulated "demographic

potential", that is, high numbers of young people who are now entering

reproductive age. High fertility levels also persist in some parts of the

world. Even if fertility rates everywhere were to fall instantly to

replacement level (2.06 children per woman), the high proportion of young

people "in the pipeline" ensures that world population growth will not be

halted for another two generations.

Economic growth, social development and natural resource use are

interrelated in ways which, though not fixed, display certain patterns. One

way of viewing these linkages over time is through the concept of transitions.

A transition may be defined as a gradual, continuous shift in society

from one "mode of operation" to another - for example, from an agricultural to

an industrial economic base. Four important phases in a transition can

The above seems to strongly echo the Rostowian stages of development model...

This notion of demographic transition maintains that.......initially, during the pre-development phase, birth and death rates are high and in equilibrium with each other,resulting in slow or no population growth. In the take-off and acceleration phases, the average death rate falls, primarily due to improved health care,the average birth rate remains high and the population grows rapidly. In the stabilization phase, the dominant determinant is a decline in birth rates.

In a complete transition, birth rates fall to match the reduction in death rates and a new stable, though much higher, population size is achieved. However,if death rates decrease but birth rates fail to decline to the same extent, the transition "stalls" and total population size continues to increase.

As of 1997, the demographic transition has become a historical fact in

approximately 30 countries of the world, including all the larger

industrialized countries of Europe and Japan. With high life expectancies and

growth rates fluctuating around 0.4 per cent a year, their populations are

effectively stable. A small number of European countries have negative growth

rates and population dynamics in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

have been strongly affected by the political and economic transformations

experienced since the late 1980s.

A more varied picture emerges in other regions of the world where population levels are generally rising. However, falling fertility rates are already powerfully evident in Latin America and some parts of Asia. Sub-Saharan

Africa has yet to complete the fertility transition, though fertility rates

appear to have begun to decline in a number of countries, for example,

Madagascar, the United Republic of Tanzania, Namibia, South Africa and

Mauritania. For developing countries as a whole, fertility rates are falling

rapidly

TO SUM UP THEREFORE...

The combination of declining fertility and accelerating population

growth is, in part, the result of previously accumulated "demographic

potential", that is, high numbers of young people who are now entering

reproductive age. High fertility levels also persist in some parts of the

world. Even if fertility rates everywhere were to fall instantly to

THE CRITICAL POINT WITH MUCH OF THIS ANALYSIS CONCERNS THE BASIC ASSUMPTIONS

MADE BY

This assumes that developing countries will complete the demographic transition. CDS uses median range projections produced by the United Nations and World Bank which depend primarily on assumed future fertility and mortality rates. By 2050, CDS projects a world population of 10 billion people, with 95 per cent of growth occurring in the developing world. Total fertility rate in developing countries is expected to reach replacement level in the mid-twenty-first century. The world population is projected to continue increasing slowly to about 11 billion. However, even slight variations in fertility rates could have enormous consequences. The high and low United Nations population estimates differ by 4 billion people, a huge difference, but one that is accounted for by a difference in average fertility rates of just one child per woman.

....."It's important to realise that there is always a disjuncture between the perception of population density and the reality. The reason why so many Westerners regard Asia as a continent of teeming masses is because people feel very uncomfortable with Asians. The reality, of course, is that Belgium has got a higher population density than China." (C4 7.12.97)

Indeed, many Western societies have far higher population densities than Asian or African societies.

The Netherlands, for example, has a population of 381 people per

square kilometre. This is more than three times as high as China's

population density of 126 people per square kilometre. Africa is very sparsely populated indeed. Even discounting desert and semi-desert areas,

there are still only 48 people per square kilometre, compared with 238 people per square kilometre in the UK. Despite what the Greens suggest, the

result of all these people in the First World has not been environmental

degradation.

Furthermore, some of the most densely populated parts of the world also

happen to be growing more trees than ever before. In Europe, for example, there are 30% more trees than there were 50 years ago.

The densely populated First World is growing more trees because

of modern high-yield farming techniques. In the United States,' less land is used to produce more food than 50 years ago. This precisely because of chemical agriculture and other sophisticated techniques.... which allows one to preserve more land for wildlife habitat, for open space, for forests and other purposes.

By contrast....it is claimed that in Africa, the use of very primitive agricultural techniques, entails the use of very large amounts of land...leading to the amount of land for endangered species.

Of course the climate in Africa is not as friendly to agriculture as it is in the Western world. However, scientists argue that with high-yield farming and irrigation Africa could feed itself many times over. The problem is not overpopulation, they say, it is backward farming techniques.

The world has been steadily urbanizing for centuries. Waves of rapid

urbanization have followed periods of economic growth in northern Europe and

subsequently in the United States of America, Japan and industrializing

countries in Asia and Latin America.

Since 1970, most urban growth has taken place in developing countries,

fuelled by both rural-urban migration and natural population increase. While

developing countries' rates of urban growth are not unprecedented, their

higher population base means that the scale of urbanization in developing

countries today often dwarfs the experience of Europe or North America.

Approximately 55 million people are now added to the urban population of

developing countries every year; since 1970, the number of "million" cities

Latin America has more than doubled. Even relatively slow rates of urban

growth can translate into enormous increases in absolute numbers.

The rural-urban transition in some developing countries has departed

from the path followed by the industrialized countries in another important

respect:

Rapid urbanization in the late twentieth century thus appears to be

characteristic both of the acceleration phase of:

(characterized by rising income and employment opportunities) and ...

2.- of failure to take off, that is, persistent poverty and social hardship in rural areas.

In both cases, urban authorities will face mounting problems in providing

adequate infrastructure, especially for impoverished slums and squatter

settlements - which are now home to an estimated 25-30 per cent of urban

inhabitants in developing countries.

Rapid urbanization has been one of the major features of the past

twenty-five years, as the difference in economic opportunities between

urban and rural areas has widened......LEADING TO THE WIDENING RURAL-URBAN

INCOME DIFFERENTIALS.....

Urban populations in most developing countries have expanded more

rapidly than total population. This is only partly because of the

increase in industrial activity: many biases in policy have created

strong incentives to expand economic activity in urban rather than

rural areas, and have thus encouraged people to move to urban areas in

the expectation of higher paid jobs and better access to services.

Far more people have migrated to urban areas than could be absorbed,

and despite large investments in urban infrastructure, the result has

been a severe strain on urban services and labour markets.

In most developing countries, this strain is reflected in highly

dualistic urban systems, where islands of high income "modernity"

coexist with shanty towns and slums. The permanence of the new

peripheral urban settlements has not been adequately recognized, and

municipal financing and management have not received the attention they

need. As a result, little has been done either to deal with the

appalling inadequacy of essential services, such as sanitation, in

these settlements, or to assist the large part of the urban economy

that consists of small-scale and informal production activities, which

operate at low levels of productivity.

While the problems are easily apparent, solutions are not. Urban

growth requires large investments in infrastructure and these compete with alternative uses of scarce investable resources.

COLONIAL CITIES: production was usually confined to rural agriculture

or concentrated mining locations. The occupational structure within

the cities therefore reflected this political and economic relationship,

with a small, metropolitan administrative elite and a large supportive

population engaged in the tertiary sector, the production and

distribution of consumer goods and services. As the colonial elite also

controlled the municipal government, the city could be shaped according

to the wishes of a small proportion of its total residents.

( D. Drakakis-Smith, "The Third World City, Routledge, 1992, p.17)

In contemporary times, the same process is in place, and still, the

same international connections are present, with a general picture

of overurbanization, urban inequality, poverty, squatter settlements,

and informal economic activity in less developed societies huge main

cities.

"The informal sector -a vast network of activities articulated with,

but no limited to remaining subsistence enclaves- has implications

that go beyond the peripheral countries. Direct subsidies to

consumption provided by informal to formal sector workers within a

particular peripheral country are also indirect subsidies to core-

nation workers, and, hence, means to maintain the rate of profits.

Thus, through a series of mechanisms well-hidden from public view,

the apparently isolated labour of shantytown workers can be registered

in the financial houses of New York and London".

(A. Portes, "The informal sector and the world economy: notes on the

structure of subsidised labour", in M. Timberlake (ed.),

URBANIZATION IN THE WORLD-ECONOMY, Academic Press, 1985)

Most of modern literature on third world urbanization rejects the

"overurbanization, lack of planning" thesis which prevailed in the

early sixties, and adopted the structuralist point of view, arguing

that...... much of the main patterns of urbanization in Africa, Asia and

One approach of the last kind is the so-called dependency/world-system

approach (see bibliography at the end). Seven assumptions are made to

explain urbanization in less developed societies:

First: there are different developmental dynamics in 3 groups of

countries occupying distinct structural strata in the

Second: like other macrostructural change, urban growth in less

developing societies is closely associated with capitalist

penetration and expansion

Third: dependent urbanization, as opposed to city growth in

industrialized areas, must be understood as the expression of

the colonial/neo colonial social dynamic of human settlements

Fourth: because dependent capitalism is characterised by high levels

of urban unemployment, 'marginality' and material inequalities,

urban poverty will be a feature of urban growth in less

developed societies

Fifth: the general premise of all dependency/world-system analysis is

that such social processes as urbanization, migration, and

economic growth in developing societies must be understood in

their international context as interacting with the nature of

the colonial and neocolonial relationship which resulted in

Sixth: urbanization, like other aspects of change in developing

societies, is driven by the outward orientation of less developed

economies and their skewed class structures, dominated by elites

allied with foreign interests

Seventh: in Africa, Asia, and Latin America patterns of urbanization are

internationally dependents and the existence of

"overurbanization" is related to international investment

dependence in the periphery.

Of course, city growth is a demographic process, but analysing it purely

in terms of flows of people from place to place with implicit

equilibrium models in mind is insufficient. The political economy of

urbanization in developing societies is necessary:

- urban bias and urbanization are tied to concentration of wealth and

power

- urban elites (which are, most of the time, also rural elites) have

an interest in maintaining cities as centres of conspicuous consumption

and islands of material wealth

- the above political force leads to what has been called "internal

colonialism", with an urban core and a rural periphery, which is very

much the case of West Africa and Latin America, where rural areas

are expropriated of scarce surplus to feed urban growth

- evidence on many developing societies indicates that the interests

of developing societies urban elites and various forms of

international capital do overlap. Is usually in the economic interest

of less developed societies elites to maintain their societies' close

linkages with the world economy, even when those ties lead to further

national dependence, unequal exchange and high levels of social

inequality.

- evidence on many developing societies points toward the formation

of developing societies elites within a triple alliance which

relates local businesses to political leaders and international capital.

Viewed in the above context, policies affecting urban concentration

and growth are likely to reflect strategies for facilitating and

subsidizing the profit making activities (as well as the consumption

patterns) of the political elites and their partners, transnational

corporations...

...the state is likely to actively promote patterns of urbanization,

migration, and structured inequality that are ECONOMICALLY

FUNCTIONAL for this powerful alliance and that work to maintain

peripheral capitalism...

The most important role that the periphery plays in the global system

of division of labour is to specialize in exports for industrialized

countries of goods containing a high share of cheap labour:

What is common to all these goods is cheap labour which makes possible

extra maximization of profits for local capital and international

capital.

What are the implications for urban policies?

Rural-urban migration has two main components: the push factor and

the pull factor.

The push factor is driven by rural population becoming landless and

unable to make a living in the rural areas.

The pull factor is driven by poverty in the rural areas and the hope

that in the cities there is some better way of survival.

Large cities attract migrants, despite all their problems, because they

provide for more economic opportunities than the miserable conditions

in the countryside.

In the cities high levels of urban inequality, poverty, unemployment and

underemployment ARE INEFFICIENT IN TERMS OF SOCIAL WELFARE but they are

Thus, dependent urbanization appears as having a POSITIVE MARKET-LED

ECONOMIC FUNCTION. And that function is mainly performed by the

so-called urban 'informal' sector or 'marginalized labour force'.

"casual work" in

temporary jobs

street vendors

work in family enterprises

and the so-called "socially useless jobs" in

begging

prostitution

service people:

gardeners

house cleaners

house servants

street scavengers

Probably begging and prostituting generate very little material output,

but each of the other types of apparent underemployment and

'misemployment' can be conceptualized as

They are labour-intensive and they avoid formal state supervision.

Which means that the cost of labour in the informal sector is much less

than wages paid in formally regulated business which keeps in place a

large supply of labour in case of economic expansion.

Lower wage costs mean that goods and services produced in the informal

sector can be purchased by formal sector workers and business for less.

The above, in turn, lowers labour and material costs for these formal

capitalist enterprises, allowing the manufacturers of the underdeveloped

country to be highly competitive in the world market.

C. Birbeck (1978) found that the scavengers of the Cali garbage dump

by recycling discarded material at very little reclamation cost, are

providing a direct subsidy to Colombian industry. He wrote:

"Rather than view the garbage picker as a vagrant who should really

be working in a factory, we should see him as a worker who is

already part of the industrial system".

S. Sethuranam (1977) found similar 'efficient' economic connections for

the informal sector and the formal economy in urban Africa.

Many developing societies still are connected to the world economy

as exporters of large quantities of relatively inexpensive agricultural

commodities.

Murdoch (1980) examines the interconnections that economic dependency

has on Third World agriculture and, because of that, in patterns of

rural-urban migration.

a) the legacy of colonialism: extreme levels of inequality, particularly

in ownership of land. Thus, the rural people is either landless or

living on small plots of land for engaging in subsistence farming.

Thus, long-standing inequality institutionalizes agrarian power

structures which are resistant to change, and food production remains

in the hand of a few.

b) the introduction of agribusiness in developing countries.

International capital brings large-scale, capital intensive

agribusiness, using expensive equipment for mass-producing crops.

This adds to rural poverty and dislocation because large tracts of

land are needed. Those large tracts of land often were formerly

used by many peasants for subsistence farming. Capital-intensive

agribusiness needs less labourers than the total amount pushed

away from the land. Also, agribusiness has developed the system

of subcontracting small peasants for crops. Although this can raise

agriculture output in terms of GDP growth, it ends up deteriorating

production of food for internal consumption.

"The power of these distortions to suppress food production is most

starkly illustrated in Africa...Food production in most African

countries has been inadequate and virtually stagnant since the 1950s.

Indeed, per capita food production has probably declined recently.

Yet in the midst of this tragedy is an amazing paradox: "A CONTINENT

Evidence shows that developing countries areas that are dominated by

highly mechanized, export-oriented, large-scale agribusiness have a

tendency to expel more people (push effect) than do areas of

subsistence farming.

Therefore, overurbanization is very much helped by the process of

"rural modernization" and then, "urban modernization", both using

capital-intensive labour-saving technologies in order to maximize

profits selling to industrial countries' markets.

The result, a "floating" population, surplus labour contingent, which

create cheap goods and services for the formal sector through

producing in the formal sector.

The same driving forces make possible to reduce the costs of urban

service provision. There is no need of servicing shanty towns, which,

at the same time means that the urban quarters where wealthy people

live can finance first-class urban service provision. In a sense,

like in the world economy, "poor people" is subsidising "rich people".

Thus, poverty, inhuman standard of living, and lack of running water

and preventive health services for million of people living in shanty

towns in developing societies big cities ARE AN EFFICIENT COMPONENT

The overall rate of city in contemporary developing societies has been

considerably higher in the second half of the twentieth century than

the rate of urbanization in Europe between 1850 and 1880 -when those

societies were at comparable levels of economic development. The reasons

were explored above.

One dimension of the demographic pressures on today's urban settlements

in developing societies is given by the following table:

Agriculture 33.0 38.4 56.2(0.4) 70.7(1.1)

Industry 24.2 22.8 24.1(2.1) 11.5(3.8)

Mining/quarrying 1.7 0.6

Manufacturing 18.8 8.9

Construction 5.0 2.0

Services 42.7 38.8 19.5(2.1) 17.8(3.9)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: Figures in brackets refer to rates of growth 1880-1900, 1960-70.

Source: L. Squires, "Employment Policy in Developing Countries",

Washington DC, World Bank, 1981

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ease of entry Difficult entry

Indigenous inputs predominate Overseas inputs

Family property predominates Corporate property

Small scale of activity Large scale of activity

Labour-intensive Capital-intensive

Adapted technology Imported technology

Skills from outside school system Formally acquired (often expatriate)

skills

Unregulated/competitive market Protected markets (e.g. tariffs,

quotas, licensing arrangements)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source: C. Rogerson, "The First Decade of Informal Sector Studies",

Environmental Studies 25, 1985

------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------

W. Armstrong and T.G. McGee, THEATRES OF ACCUMULATION: STUDIES IN ASIAN

AND LATIN AMERICAN URBANIZATION, Methuen, 1985

M. F. Lofchie, "Political and economic origins of African hunger",

Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 13, 1976

W. Murdoch, THE POVERTY OF NATIONS: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF HUNGER AND

POPULATION, John Hopkins University Press, 1980

C. Ake, "The congruence of political economies and ideologies in

Africa", in P. Gutkind and I. Wallerstein (eds.), THE POLITICAL

ECONOMY OF CONTEMPORARY AFRICA, Sage, 1976

R. Sklar, "The nature of class domination in Africa", Journal of Modern

African Studies, Vol.17, No.4, 1979

P. Evans, DEPENDENT DEVELOPMENT, Princeton University Press, 1979

M. Castells, "The urban question: a Marxist approach", Massachussets

Institute of Technology Press, 1977

V. Bornschier and C. Chase-Dunn, TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND

UNDERDEVELOPMENT, Praeger, 1985

D. Drakakis-Smith, URBANIZATION, HOUSING AND THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS,

Croom Helm, 1981

M. Smith and J. Feagin (eds.), THE CITY IN THE NEW INTERNATIONAL

DIVISION OF LABOUR, Basil Blackwell, 1987

A. Portes, "The urban informal sector: definition, controversy, and

relation to development", Review, No. 7, 1983

C. Birbeck, "Garbage, industry and the "vultures" of Cali, Colombia",

in R. Bromley and C. Gerry (eds.), CASUAL WORK AND POVERTY

IN THE THIRD WORLD CITIES, John Wiley, 1978

S. Sethuranam, "The urban informal sector in Africa", INTERNATIONAL

LABOUR REVIEW, Vol 116, No 3, 1977

D. Drakakis-Smith, THE THIRD WORLD CITY, Routledge, 1992