Labor, Jobs, and the Modern Economy | Becker Friedman Institute
20 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in economics, industrial organisation, Joseph Schumpeter, labour economics, politics - USA, population economics, technological progress Tags: creative destruction
Without one-child policy, China still might not see baby boom, gender balance
03 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, population economics Tags: China, economics of fertility
World, high income, middle income and low income country fertility rates since 1950
28 Jun 2016 Leave a comment
in development economics, population economics Tags: demographic transition, economics of fertility, The Great Escape
Source: United Nations
Median age for selected ethnic groups in New Zealand, 1986, 2013
09 Jun 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, population economics
Improvements in remaining life expectancy of Australians aged 25 to 29 since 1990
30 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, health economics, population economics Tags: Australia, life expectancies, The Great Escape
The graph shows how many years you have left if aged 25 to 29 in 1990.
Source: Life Expectancy: progress from 1990 to 2013 | Health Intelligence.
New Zealand population trends, 1950-2100
30 May 2016 Leave a comment
in labour economics, labour supply, population economics Tags: ageing society, demographic crisis, labour demographics, population bomb, Population demographics
Population density across #Europe
28 May 2016 Leave a comment
in population economics Tags: Europe, maps
Countries with the most people living overseas
23 May 2016 Leave a comment
in labour economics, labour supply, population economics Tags: economics of immigration
Without one-child policy, China still might not see baby boom, gender balance
20 May 2016 Leave a comment
Migrants as % of populations of USA, Canada, Western European countries, Australia & New Zealand, 1990 and 2015
15 May 2016 1 Comment
in population economics Tags: economics of migration
Source: United Nations Population Division | Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Trends in International Migrant Stock: The 2015 Revision,
Earth Day flashback
21 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, environmentalism, labour economics, labour supply, population economics Tags: doomsday prophecies, Earth Day, Paul Ehrlich
Will the population bomb prevent the great stagnation?
16 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, economic growth, industrial organisation, P.T. Bauer, population economics Tags: doomsday prophecies, endogenous growth theory, pessimism bias, population bomb
If only Paul Ehrlich had been right! Population explosion would have meant an explosion in people who could invent new technologies and populate in much larger markets to provide an incentive to invent new products.
Among Paul Ehrlich’s many analytical errors, he did not take into account that more people meant more inventors and more untapped markets.
Jones argued that in the very long run the only way to have further innovation is to have more people. If there are more people undertaking R&D and more people to populate the markets for those inventions, there will be further growth because the decreasing returns to knowledge creation will be overcome by having more R&D workers.
Jones attributes much of the growth in the 20th century to one-off effects that cannot be repeated such as putting more people into higher education:
… growth in educational attainment, developed-economy R&D intensity, and population are all likely to be slower in the future than in the past. These factors point to slower growth in US living standards.
Second, a counterbalancing factor is the rise of China, India, and other emerging economies, which likely implies rapid growth in world researchers for at least the next several decades.
Third, and more speculatively, the shape of the idea production function introduces a fundamental uncertainty into the future of growth. For example, the possibility that artificial intelligence will allow machines to replace workers to some extent could lead to higher growth in the future.
A larger population increases the rate of technological progress by increasing the number of geniuses and other creative people.The doomsday prophecies about the population bomb never took that into account. That is why they are wrong.
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