Human Capital, Population Growth and Economic Development: Beyond Correlations

Empirical evidence on three assertions commonly-made by populationpolicy advocates about the relationships among population growth, humancapital formation and economic development is discussed and evaluated inthe light of economic-biological models of household behavior and of itsrelevance to population policy. The three assertions are that (a)population growth and human capital investments jointly reflect and respondto changes in the economic environment, (b) larger families directly impedehuman capital formation, and (c) the inability of couples to controlfertility is an important determinant of investment in human capital. Theevidence suggests that widely-observed correlations among population growth,human capital and economic variables, which admit to alternativeinterpretations, are far stronger than are the estimates from studies whoseobjective is to quantify the causal mechanisms underlying the threeassertions; however, there is empirical support for each.