Population Growth,Development and the Environment

When Population Studies was founded in 1946 a main preoccupation of demographers and of the public was the prospective decline of the British population, and the falling off of its quality because on the average a poor family had more children than a better-off one. Over the course of the 50 years interests have shifted to the aging of populations as births decline and mortality improves; immigration, immigrants being welcomed for the decades after the war, and subsequently facing hostile political pressures; environmental degradation and the spread of new diseases. The fall in the birth rate, required both for development and for protection of the environment, is spreading from the original industrialized countries of Europe and America to Asia, somewhat more slowly to Latin America, slowest of all to Africa.     

关于人口对环境作用机制的理论思考

人口与环境之间存在着复杂的内在关系,也是学术界的一个重要话题。然而在这个问题的研究中,还有很多的概念和理解误区。本文从一些基本概念出发,对人口与环境的相互作用方式和影响的机制进行了分析,认为人口对环境的影响体现在人口的动态变化中,而这种变化的后果将通过社会经济的中间媒介对环境表现为两个基本作用———倍乘作用和激发作用,最后给出了作者关于人口与环境的相互关系框架。     

中国西北地区人口增长对土地退化的驱动作用分析

文章通过定性定量分析西北地区人口增长与粮食生产系统和土地压力响应之间的相关关系,发现人口的增长主要与耕地面积的扩展有较强相关性,与单位粮食亩产增加等变量指标的关系较弱。进一步分析发现,即便是在人口增长与耕地扩大的关系中,实际的耕地增长和粮食需求也远远大于实际人口增长的需求,由此可以看到在西北地区粮食生产和耕地面积扩大的过程中,人口增长并不如人们一般认为的那样大,人口增长对土地退化只能承担一部分责任,不构成最重要的原因。     

人口数量与消费水平对资源环境的影响研究

文章用单位人和概念模型研究1957～2005年中国人口数量增长与消费水平提高对资源环境影响的相对状况.结果表明,2005年1个人对资源环境的压力相当于20世纪50年代6～7个人的影响;1980年以前人口数量增长是影响资源环境的主导因素,1980年以来则是消费水平提高;消费水平提高对资源环境压力的贡献率先降后升,且1980年以后稳定在45%左右;人口数量增长对资源环境压力的贡献率先升后降,并一直减至2005年的8.22%.     

人口增长压力下的环境治理途径分析与启示

不断增长的人口压力和对环境资源的不合理利用已经严重影响了生态环境的可持续性,因此,必须选择科学有效的环境治理途径来解决这一问题。环境治理按照不同的治理思路可以分为“法律管制型”、“经济激励型”和“公众参与型”三种途径,三者各有利弊。结合人口增长压力趋强这一基本国情,我们认为,在逐渐明晰环境产权制度和完善环境市场监督机制的基础上,强调公众参与的环境治理思路是我国环境治理的根本途径和战略目标。     

Population Growth and Environmental Impact: Ideology and Academic Discourse in Israel

This article addresses the discourse of Israeli academics, policy makers, and environmental activists regarding the environmental implications of population growth in Israel. While there are compelling reasons that population growth should be a prominent topic for local environmental research and discussion, it is rarely considered in environmental campaigns or in the academic literature. I attribute this to the embeddedness of the Israeli environmental community within wider Israeli society. National ideologies and religiosity, coupled with immediate security and social concerns, bound what is considered sanctioned discourse regarding population growth, prescribing the rules of academic engagement for this controversial topic.     

人口活跃因素对区域经济增长影响的研究

从30多年我国各地区的社会经济发展历程可看到一个事实,较发达地区人口在不断流入、人口素质在提高、人口年龄结构较为年轻且负担小。以人口素质、人口流动聚集、年龄结构等为表征量的人口活跃因素对经济发展的影响是不可忽视的。为了准确判定这三个人口因素在经济发展水平中的具体作用和对要素效率的影响,本文从多维度将三个因素综合为一个指标——人口活跃度指数,并将此指标引入生产函数,通过计量分析发现人口活跃因素无论内生作用于资本,还是内生作用于劳动力,对区域经济增长均有较大影响。表明人口活跃因素对经济发展水平不仅仅总体上有积极作用而且对于生产要素的效率有着显著影响。因而在未来区域经济增长和发展中要充分利用年轻化的人口年龄结构,促进区域人口有效流动,提高人口素质尤其劳动力人口素质。     

近代东北人口增长及其对经济发展的影响

近代东北地区是我国人口增长最快的地区,人口增长的主要原因是大量移民人口的增加,而不是靠人口的自然增长,其中大量跨境移民的涌入是一个重要特征。大量的国内移民人口的增加促进了东北近代农业的发展,这一定程度上缓解了近代中国内地的人口压力。另外,大量移民人口的增加促进了近代东北地区贸易、工业和城市等的发展,从而促进了近代东北经济的发展。     

人口效应及其对中国经济增长的影响

对于人口增长与经济增长的关系,理论界存在着多种争论。本文首先在现代经济增长理论基础上建立了一个简单的逻辑框架,进而得出了关于人口增长与经济增长关系的预测,然后利用大量的经验数据初步证实了上述判断;虽然受各种因素的影响,人口增长的经济效应可能依时间、地点而有明显的差异,但无论是从长期还是短期来看,人口增长对经济增长都有一定的促进作用。因此,在目前的背景下,应当适时地调整现行的人口管理政策,以维持我国经济的持续增长。     

Countries with Rapid Population Growth and Resource Constraints: Issues of Food,Agriculture, and Development

Recent long‐term demographic projections suggest a fast deceleration of global population growth and the eventual peaking of world population later in this century at about 9.2 billion, roughly 50 percent above the present level. Some low‐income and food‐insecure countries, however, have projected populations in 2050 that are multiples of present ones. In some of these countries agriculture must play a leading role in their development efforts because they have high economic dependence on that sector. For those among them that have scarce agricultural resources, a prima facie case can be made that the high population growth rates projected may not be compatible with the development potential offered by such resources. Their demographic projections may need to be revisited, taking into account such inadequate potential. The global demographic slowdown notwithstanding, the “population explosion”‐related issues pertaining to food and agriculture will not become irrelevant but will be become increasingly localized.     

中国人口增长率与人口文化素质相关分析

依据1990-2000年人口统计资料,运用相关分析方法,对我国人口增长率的降低与人口文化素质的提高进行了相关分析。结果表明,我国人口增长率的降低与人口文化素质的提高存在强相关关系,特别是大学(含大专)文化程度人口所占人口比重与人口增长率存在明显的负相关,同时初中文化程度人口所占比重与人口增长率之间也存在明显负相关。     

人口增长、城市化对环境的影响——以CO2排放为例

基于1978—2007中国宏观经济时间序列数据,利用协整回归方法和误差修正模型(ECM),实证分析了人口增长、城市化水平、人均GDP和能源强度对CO2排放的影响。结果显示,人口总量、城市化水平、人均GDP和能源强度与CO2排放存在长期均衡关系。长期来看,人口总量对CO2排放量的影响最大,城市化水平其次,人均GDP最小。短期来看,能源强度和人均GDP对CO2排放波动影响较大,而人口总量和城市化水平影响不显著。     

Ample Food forIncreasing, Population

Chinawillbeabletofeeditspeople,evenwhenthecountry'spopulationsoarsto1.5billion,asisprojectedtohappenby2025.Thatconclusion,releasedonNovember24,istheresultofafour-yearstudybytheAustria-basedInternationalInstituteforAppliedSystemsAnalysisandtheinstitut...     

Longer Life and Population Growth

Enthusiasm about the prospect of large increases in human life expectancy is often dampened by fears that lower mortality will increase population size, hence population pressure. A simple mathematical model of life-cycle stretching demonstrates that if increased longevity is accompanied by later childbearing, a trend that is already underway, future declines in mortality will not increase population size.     

Alfred Marshall on the Growth of Population

Classical views of population, as expounded in the works of Smith, Malthus, and Mill, retained their influence through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth—until sidelined, many would argue, by the marginalist revolution in economics. Oddly, Alfred Marshall (1842–1924), the major figure in that revolution, was, when it came to population, himself firmly in the classical tradition. He diverged from it in two main respects. Writing in the late nineteenth century he had of course to take account of Darwinian theory, with the potential implications it suggested for differential fertility. And, deriving from his interests in industrial organization and efficiency and in biological analogies in economics, he gave greater attention than his forebears to the possibility that returns to labor could routinely be increasing as well as diminishing. Marshall, the preeminent economist of his time, was for most of his career professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge. His major work, Principles of Economics, was first published in 1890, and then in a series of revised editions over the rest of his life. The final—8th—edition appeared in 1920. (A “ninth” variorum edition was issued in 1961.) The Principles has been described, by G. J. Stigler, as the second greatest work in the history of economics. The contributions to theory and method warranting such praise, however, are chiefly in the later parts of the volume. Up to and including Book IV (The Agents of Production: Land, Labour, Capital and Organization), the reader is given the impression, according to Keynes, of “perusing a clear, apt and humane exposition of fairly obvious matters.” Certainly in comparison to the rest, these early sections were left fairly intact in their 1890 form over subsequent editions. But Keynes also remarks, in his lengthy obituary of Marshall, how deceptive that surface smoothness could be—and notes that Marshall “had a characteristic habit in all his writings of reserving for footnotes what was most novel or important in what he had to say.” The excerpts below are taken from Book IV, Chapters IV (§§1–2, 4–5) and XIII (§3), of the 1890 edition of the Principles. In the first, Marshall presents a brief, selective history of population doctrines up to Malthus, and then the doctrine “in its modern form”; in the second, from the concluding chapter of Book IV, he explores the applicability of the law of increasing returns—stated, earlier in the chapter, as: “An increase of labour and capital leads generally to improved organization, which increases the efficiency of the work of labour and capital.”     

中部地区人口对生态环境的影响分析

中部地区包括山西、安徽、江西、河南、湖北、湖南六省,地处我国内陆腹地,具有承东启西、连接南北的区位优势,在我国经济社会发展格局中占有重要地位。当前中部地区面临着诸多制约其长远发展的矛盾和问题,其中人口与生态环境和谐发展是中部地区面临的一个重要挑战。因此,统筹解决区域人口问题,将人口压力转变为人力资源优势,为区域经济发展提供良好的人口环境和生态环境,对促进中部地区崛起,推动我国区域协调发展具有重要的现实意义。     

James Mill on the Growth and Limitation of Population

The brief passages reproduced below from James Mill's 1821 work, Elements of Political Economy, present an early analysis of total and net fecundity, a discussion of the scope and limits of government influence on fertility, and a reflection on the goal of a stationary population. In his preface Mill describes the Elements as “a school‐book in political economy”—it was in fact based on the lessons he gave to his then barely teenaged son—and he disavows any claim to originality. Moreover, the chapter on wages, from which the excerpts come, has been generally disdained because of its espousal of the discredited wage‐fund theory of wage determination. But Mill's treatment of population is as fresh and stimulating as it is concise. James Mill (1773–1836) is now known more as the father of John Stuart Mill—and as the designer of the latter's famously rigorous education—than for his own writing. Born and educated in Scotland, Mill moved to England, making his living as a journalist. On the side, he was writing what became a three‐volume History of British India (1817), which led to long‐term employment in the London office of the East India Company. Mill's thinking on economics was strongly influenced by his friendship with David Ricardo and on public policy by Jeremy Bentham. The group of reformist thinkers that surrounded him, known as the philosophical radicals, were protégés in the main of Bentham. Mill, like others in this group, was a proponent of family planning, albeit far more cautious on the subject than the propagandist Francis Place. “Prudence,” which for Malthus meant only delay of marriage, Mill took equally to cover control of marital fertility: it should comprise measures “by which either marriages are sparingly contracted, or care is taken that children, beyond a certain number, shall not be the fruit.” In the last of the excerpts, offering an unapologetic vision of bourgeois leisure and affluence, he anticipates J. S. Mill's notable chapter on the stationary state (Book IV, Chapter 6) in the Principles of Political Economy (1848)—see the Archives item in PDR 12, no. 2. The text is reproduced from the 3rd edition of the Elements (London, 1826), this part of which is virtually the same as the first edition aside from some minor improvements in expression. The excerpts are from Chapter 2, Section 2, pp. 46–50, 57–59, and 63–66.