Now that we have considered the economic impact of the rate of population growth
Now that we have considered the economic impact of the rate of population growth, let’s consider the economic impact of the population’s current size.
Even if the population is no longer growing, the population may be so large that just maintaining the population as its current size and standard of living requires the overexploitation of sensitive natural and environmental capital. We see this possibility today as we face global warming due to human activity. The level of carbon emissions rises with the number of people, other things being equal. But other things may not be equal. The level of carbon emissions also depends on production and consumption per person and the carbon intensity of that production and consumption.
carbon emissions = # people x carbon emissions per person
carbon emissions per person = goods consumed/produced per person x carbon intensity per good consumed/produced
That is why wealthier nations tend to have larger carbon footprints than poorer nations. Canada in 2020 was the eleventh largest emitter of CO2 in the world, right after various Middle Eastern countries, and approximately thirty-ninth by population.
In Figure 19-0 above, the width of a country’s bar shows the number of people, and the height of the bar shows the carbon emissions per person.
We see that a population’s size is not tightly correlated to its carbon emissions per person.
Figure 19-1 shows us data from 2011. The width of the each bar indicates the size of the nation’s population as a fraction of the world population, while the height of the bar indicates its GDP per person, measured in US dollars and adjusted for differences in the cost of living. Some of the largest countries are the poorest, but there are many exceptions. The nation with the highest material standard of living, the United States, is not one of the smaller ones.
The next Figure compares per-capita income to population density for countries in 2020. Both axes are in logarithmic scale because the differences measured linearly would be too great to fit all countries on the same graph.
Population density may be relevant to the standard of living inasmuch as capital – physical, environmental, social – may be strained within a particular region. However, within a country, densely populated regions such as cities often feature more capital per worker than less densely populated regions.
Figure 19-2 shows us that, while many low-GDP-per-capita nations were densely populated in 2020, so too were the Netherlands, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
Consider that there are several ways in which population size and density can benefit a nation economically. If a small or sparsely populated country had extensive free trade relationships, a similar language and culture as its trading partners, excellent telecommunications and transportation networks, similar regulations, and few tariffs, national borders would be irrelevant and its small size would not matter.
Would you prefer to live in a larger city? Wo