Poverty

Poverty often widens and deepens as one indirect effect of population growth. An estimated 20 percent to 25 percent of the world's population lives in "absolute poverty," defined as per capita income of less than $370 a year. More than 90 percent of such people live in developing countries, which are experiencing more than 90 percent of the world¹s population growth.1 Rapid population growth is commonly assumed to be a "root cause" of poverty, but in reality the argument has never been substantiated. If population growth plays a role in poverty, it does not act alone.

In many countries in recent decades population growth has had impacts that themselves contribute to poverty, such as the growing inability of governments to provide adequate sanitation, health care services and education. The relationship is clearer if poverty is defined broadly to include not just insufficient economic income and assets, but inadequate education and health and an incapacity to develop the potential for a creative and productive life.2 In certain countries and at certain levels of population size, further or rapid population growth may negatively influence economic growth itself. Rapid population growth, high fertility and closely spaced births can contribute to poor maternal and child health, degrade or restrict access to common or community property, and reduce per capita availability of arable land and renewable fresh water. To the extent that population growth impedes the improvement of children¹s health and educational opportunities, it tends to lock subsequent generations into poverty as well.3

Pressures relating to population growth contribute to a lack of adequate housing and undermine social services and transportation networks on which the poor depend for well-being and livelihood. Population growth helps to drive urbanization, and the urban poor often lack access to the communal and other non-monetary assets that sometimes serve as a buffer for the rural poor. Exposure to environmental toxins and unsafe water disproportionately jeopardizes the health of the urban poor.4 Recent global surveys suggest that the income gap between rich and poor is growing in many wealthy countries‹including the United States‹as well as less wealthy ones. More than 3 billion people, or half of humanity, subsist on less than $2 a day, and both the number of people and the proportion of total population living in such extreme poverty are rising. In most of the countries in which economic growth has actually narrowed the income gap between the poorest and richest (principally in Scandinavia and east Asia), governments have invested heavily in health, education, credit for low-income entrepreneurs and the advancement of women.5 Such social policies tend to have the added benefit of reducing birthrates.

"Although it is not clear whether population growth causes poverty in the long run or not," population analyst Dennis A. Ahlburg writes, "it is clear that high fertility leading to rapidly growing population will increase the number of people in poverty in the short-run, and in at least some cases make escape from poverty more difficult."6

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