research paper about population explosion

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The world population explosion: causes, backgrounds and projections for the future

J. van bavel.

Centre for Sociological Research / Family & Population Studies (FaPOS), Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Leuven, Parkstraat 45 bus 3601, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the total world population crossed the threshold of 1 billion people for the first time in the history of the homo sapiens sapiens. Since then, growth rates have been increasing exponentially, reaching staggeringly high peaks in the 20th century and slowing down a bit thereafter. Total world population reached 7 billion just after 2010 and is expected to count 9 billion by 2045. This paper first charts the differences in population growth between the world regions. Next, the mechanisms behind unprecedented population growth are explained and plausible scenarios for future developments are discussed. Crucial for the long term trend will be the rate of decline of the number of births per woman, called total fertility. Improvements in education, reproductive health and child survival will be needed to speed up the decline of total fertility, particularly in Africa. But in all scenarios, world population will continue to grow for some time due to population momentum. Finally, the paper outlines the debate about the consequences of the population explosion, involving poverty and food security, the impact on the natural environment, and migration flows.

Key words: Fertility, family planning, world population, population growth, demographic transition, urbanization, population momentum, population projections.

Introduction

In the year 1900, Belgium and the Philippines had more or less the same population, around 7 million people. By the year 2000, the population of the Western European monarchy had grown to 10 million citizens, while the South East Asian republic at the turn of the century already counted 76 million citizens. The population of Belgium has since then exceeded 11 million citizens, but it is unlikely that this number will rise to 12 million by the year 2050. The population of the Philippines on the other hand will continue to grow to a staggering 127 million citizens by 2050, according to the demographic projections of the United Nations (UN 2013).

The demographic growth rate of the Philippines around the turn of the century (2% a year) has already created enormous challenges and is clearly unsustainable in the long term: such growth implies a doubling of the population every 35 years as a consequence of which there would be 152 million people by 2035, 304 million by 2070, and so on. Nobody expects such a growth to actually occur. This contribution will discuss the more realistic scenarios for the future.

Even the rather modest Belgian demographic growth rate around the turn of this century (0.46%) is not sustainable in the long term. In any case, it exceeds by far the average growth rate of the human species (homo sapiens sapiens) that arose in Africa some 200.000 years ago. Today, earth is inhabited by some 7 billion people. To achieve this number in 200.000 years, the average yearly growth rate over this term should have been around 0.011% annually (so 11 extra human beings per 1.000 human beings already living on earth). The current Belgian growth rate would imply that our country would have grown to 7 billion in less than 1500 years.

The point of this story is that the current growth numbers are historically very exceptional and untenable in the long term. The demographic growth rates are indeed on the decline worldwide and this paper will attempt to explain some of the mechanisms behind that process. That doesn’t change the fact, however, that the growth remains extraordinarily high and the decline in some regions very slow. This is especially the case in Sub Saharan Africa. In absolute numbers, the world population will continue to grow anyway for quite some time as a result of demographic inertia. This too will be further clarified in this paper.

The evolution of the world population in numbers

In order to be sustainable, the long term growth rate of the population should not differ much from 0%. That is because a growth rate exceeding 0% has exponential implications. In simple terms: if a combination of birth and growth figures only appears to cause a modest population growth initially, then this seems to imply an explosive growth in the longer term.

Thomas R. Malthus already acquired this point of view by the end of the 18th century. In his famous “Essay on the Principle of Population” (first edition in 1789), Malthus argues justly that in time the growth of the population will inevitably slow down, either by an increase of the death rate or by a decrease of the birth rate. On a local scale, migration also plays an important role.

It is no coincidence that Malthus’ essay appeared in England at the end of the 18th century. After all, the population there had started to grow at a historically unseen rate. More specifically the proletariat had grown immensely and that worried the intellectuals and the elite. Year after year, new demographic growth records were recorded.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the number of 1 billion people was exceeded for the first time in history. Subsequently growth accelerated and the number of 2 billion people was already surpassed around 1920. By 1960, another billion had been added, in 40 instead of 120 years time. And it continued to go even faster: 4 billion by 1974, 5 billion by 1987, 6 billion by 1999 and 7 billion in 2011 ( Fig. 1 ).

This will certainly not stop at the current 7 billion. According to the most recent projections by the United Nations, the number of 8 billion will probably be exceeded by 2025, and around 2045 there will be more than 9 billion people 1 . The further one looks into the future, the more uncertain these figures become, and with demography on a world scale one must always take into account a margin of error of a couple of tens of millions. But according to all plausible scenarios, the number of 9 billion will be exceeded by 2050.

Demographic growth was and is not equally distributed around the globe. The population explosion first occurred on a small scale and with a relatively moderate intensity in Europe and America, more or less between 1750 and 1950. From 1950 on, a much more substantial and intensive population explosion started to take place in Asia, Latin America and Africa ( Fig. 2 ). Asia already represented over 55% of the world population in 1950 with its 1.4 billion citizens and by the year 2010 this had increased to 4.2 billion people or 60%. Of those people, more than 1.3 billion live in China and 1.2 billion in India, together accounting for more than one third of the world population.

In the future, the proportion of Asia will come down and that of Africa will increase. Africa was populated by some 230 million people around 1950, or 9% of the world population. In 2010 there were already more than 1 billion Africans or 15% of the world population. According to UN projections, Africa will continue to grow at a spectacular rate up to 2.2 billion inhabitants in 2050 or 24% of the world population. The proportion of Europe, on the other hand, is evolving in the opposite direction: from 22% of the world population in 1950, over 11% in 2010 to an expected mere 8% in 2050. The population of Latin America has grown and is growing rapidly in absolute terms, but because of the strong growth in Asia and especially Africa, the relative proportion of the Latin American population is hardly increasing (at most from 6 to 8%). The proportion of the population in North America, finally, has decreased slightly from 7 to 5% of the world population.

What these figures mainly come down to in practice is that the population size in especially the poor countries is increasing at an unprecedented rate. At the moment, more than 5.7 billion people, or more than 80% of humanity, are living in what the UN categorise as a developing country. By 2050, that number would – according to the projections – have increased to 8 billion people or 86% of the world population. Within this group of developing countries, the group of least developed countries, the poorest countries so to speak, is growing strongly: from 830 million now, up to an expected 1.7 billion in 2050. This comprises very poor countries such as Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, Niger or Togo in Africa; Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Myanmar in Asia; and Haiti in the Caribbean.

The growth of the world population goes hand in hand with global urbanisation: while around the year 1950 less than 30% of people lived in the cities, this proportion has increased to more than 50%. It is expected that this proportion will continue to grow to two thirds around 2050. Latin America is the most urbanised continent (84%), closely followed by North America (82%) and at a distance by Europe (73%). The population density has increased intensely especially in the poorest countries: from 9 people per square km in 1950 to 40 people per square km in 2010 (an increase by 330%) in the poorest countries, while this figure in the rich countries increased from 15 to 23 people per square km (a 50% growth). In Belgium, population density is 358 people per square km and in the Netherlands 400 people per square km; in Rwanda this number is 411, in the Palestinian regions 666 and in Bangladesh an astonishing 1050.

Although the world population will continue to grow in absolute figures for some time – a following paragraph will explain why – the growth rate in percentages in all large world regions is decreasing. In the richer countries, the yearly growth rate has already declined to below 0.3%. On a global scale, the yearly growth rate of more than 2% at the peak around 1965 decreased to around 1% now. A further decline to less than 0.5% by 2050 is expected. In the world’s poorest countries, the demographic growth is still largest: at present around 2.2%. For these countries, a considerable decrease is expected, but the projected growth rate would not fall below 1.5% before 2050. This means, as mentioned above, a massive growth of the population in absolute figures in the world’s poorest countries.

Causes of the explosion: the demographic transition

The cause of, first, the acceleration and, then, the deceleration in population growth is the modern demographic transition: an increasingly growing group of countries has experienced a transition from relatively high to low birth and death rates, or is still in the process of experiencing this. It is this transition that is causing the modern population explosion. Figure 3 is a schematic and strongly simplified representation of the modern demographic transition.

In Europe, the modern demographic transition started to take place in the middle of the 18th century. Until then, years of extremely high death rates were quite frequent. Extremely high crisis mortality could be the consequence of epidemic diseases or failed harvests and famine, or a combination of both. As a consequence of better hygiene and a better transportation infrastructure (for one, the canals and roads constructed by Austria in the 18th century), amongst other reasons, crisis mortality became less and less frequent. Later on in the 19th century, child survival began to improve. Vaccination against smallpox for example led to an eradication of the disease, with the last European smallpox pandemic dating from 1871. This way, not only the years of crisis mortality became less frequent, but also the average death rate decreased, from an average 30 deaths per 1000 inhabitants in the beginning of the 19th century to around 15 deaths per 1000 citizens by the beginning of the 20th century. In the meantime, the birth rate however stayed at its previous, high level of 30-35 births per 1000 inhabitants.

The death rate went down but the birth rate still didn’t: this caused a large growth in population. It was only near the end of the nineteenth century (a bit earlier in some countries, later in others) that married couples in large numbers started to reduce their number of children. By the middle of the 20th century, the middle class ideal of a two children household had gained enormous popularity and influence. The reaction by the Church, for example in the encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968), came much too late to bring this evolution to a halt.

As a consequence of widespread family planning – made even easier in the sixties by modern hormonal contraceptives – the birth rate started declining as well and the population tended back towards zero growth. Nowadays the end of this transition process has been more than achieved in all European countries, because the fertility has been below replacement level for several decades (the replacement level is the fertility level that would in the long term lead to a birth rate identical to the death rate, if there would be no migration) 2 .

That the population explosion in the developing countries since the second half of the 20th century was so much more intense and massive, is a consequence of the fact that in those countries, the process of demographic transition occurred to a much more extreme extent and on a much larger scale. On the one hand, mortality decreased faster than in Europe. After all, in Europe the decline in mortality was the result of a gradual understanding of the importance of hygiene and afterwards the development of new medical insights. These insights of course already existed at the start of the demographic transitions in Asian, Latin American and African regions, whereby the life expectancy in these regions could grow faster. On the other hand, the total fertility – the average number of children per woman – at the start of the transition was a lot higher in many poor regions than it initially was in Europe. For South Korea, Brasil and the Congo, for example, the total fertility rate shortly after the Second World War (at the start of their demographic transition) is estimated to be 6 children per woman. In Belgium this number was close to 4.5 children per woman by the middle of the nineteenth century. In some developing regions, the fertility and birth rate decreased moderately to very fast, but in other regions this decline took off at an exceptionally sluggish pace – this will be further explained later on. As a consequence of these combinations of factors, in most of these countries the population explosion was much larger than it had been in most European countries.

Scenarios for the future

Nonetheless, the process of demographic transition has reached its second phase in almost all countries in the world, namely the phase of declining fertility and birth rates. In a lot of Asian and Latin American countries, the entire transition has taken place and the fertility level is around or below the replacement level. South Korea for example is currently at 1.2 children per woman and is one of the countries with the lowest fertility levels in the world. In Iran and Brasil the fertility level is currently more or less equal to Belgium’s, that is 1.8 to 1.9 children per woman.

Crucial to the future evolution of the population is the further evolution of the birth rate. Scenarios for the future evolution of the size and age of the population differ according to the hypotheses concerning the further evolution of the birth rate. The evolution of the birth rate is in turn dependent on two things: the further evolution of the total fertility rate (the average number of children per woman) in the first place and population momentum in the second. The latter is a concept I will later on discuss in more detail. The role of the population momentum is usually overlooked in the popular debates, but is of utmost importance in understanding the further evolution of the world population. Population momentum is the reason why we are as good as certain that the world population will continue to grow for a while. The other factor, the evolution of the fertility rate, is much more uncertain but of critical importance in the long term. The rate at which the further growth of the world population can be slowed down is primarily dependent on the extent to which the fertility rates will continue to decline. I will further elaborate on this notion in the next paragraph. After that, I will clarify the notion of population momentum.

Declining fertility

Fertility is going down everywhere in the world, but it’s going down particularly slowly in Africa. A further decline remains uncertain there. Figure 4 shows the evolution per world region between 1950 and 2010, plus the projected evolution until 2050. The numbers before 2010 illustrate three things. First of all, on all continents there is a decline going on. Secondly, this decline is not equal everywhere. And thirdly: the differences between the continents remain large in some cases. Asia and Latin America have seen a similar decline in fertility: from 5.9 children per woman in 1950 to 2.5 at the start of the 21st century. Europe and North America had already gone through the largest part of their demographic transition by the 1950’s. Their fertility level has been below replacement levels for years. Africa has indeed seen a global decrease of fertility, but the average number of children is still at an alarmingly high level: the fertility merely decreased from 6.7 to 5.1 children per woman.

These continental averages hide a huge underlying diversity in fertility paths. Figure 5 attempts to illustrate this for a number of countries. Firstly let us consider two African countries: the Congo and Niger. As was often the case in Europe in the 19th century, fertility was first on the rise before it started declining. In the Congo this decrease was more extensive, from around 6 children in 1980 to 4 children per woman today, and a further decline to just below three is expected in the next thirty years. Niger is the country where the fertility level remains highest: from 7 it first rose to an average of just below 8 children per woman in the middle of the 1980’s, before decreasing to just above 6.5 today. For the next decades a decline to 4 children per woman is expected. But that is not at all certain: it is dependent on circumstances that will be further explained in a moment. The demographic transition is after all not a law of nature but the result of human actions and human institutions.

Around 1950, Pakistan and Iran had more or less the same fertility level as Niger, but both countries have seen a considerable decline in the meantime. In Pakistan the level decreased slowly to the current level of 3 children per woman. In Iran the fertility decreased more abruptly, faster and deeper to below the replacement level – Iran today has one of the lowest fertility levels in the world, and a further decline is expected. The Iranian Revolution of 1978 played a crucial role in the history of Iran (Abassi-Shavazi et al., 2009): it brought better education and health care, two essential ingredients for birth control.

Brasil was also one of the countries with very high fertility in the 1950’s – higher than the Congo, for example. The decrease started earlier than in Iran but happened more gradually. Today both countries have the same total fertility, below the replacement level.

Child mortality, education and family planning

Which factors cause the average number of children to go down? The literature concerning explanations for the decrease in fertility is vast and complex, but two factors emerge as crucial in this process: education and child survival.

Considering child survival first: countries combining intensive birth control with very high child mortality are simply non-existent. The statistical association between the level of child mortality and fertility is very tight and strong: in countries with high child mortality, fertility is high, and vice versa. This statistical correlation is very strong because the causal relation goes in both directions; with quick succession of children and therefore a lot of children to take care for, the chances of survival for the infants are lower than in those families with only a limited number of children to take care of – this is a fortiori the case where infrastructure for health care is lacking. A high fertility level thus contributes to a high child mortality. And in the other direction: where survival chances of children improve, the fertility will go down because even those households with a lower number of children have increasing confidence in having descendants in the long term.

It is crucial to understand that the decline in child mortality in the demographic transition always precedes the decline in fertility. Men, women and families cannot be convinced of the benefits of birth control if they don’t have confidence in the survival chances of their children. Better health care is therefore essential, and a lack of good health care is one of the reasons for a persistently high fertility in a country like Niger.

Education is another factor that can cause a decline in fertility. This is probably the most important factor, not just because education is an important humanitarian goal in itself (apart from the demographic effects), but also because with education one can kill two birds with one stone: education causes more birth control but also better child survival (recently clearly demonstrated by Smith-Greenaway (2013), which in its turn will lead to better birth control. The statistical correlation between level of education and level of fertility is therefore very strong.

Firstly, education enhances the motivation for birth control: if parents invest in the education of their children, they will have fewer children, as has been demonstrated. Secondly, education promotes a more forward-looking lifestyle: it will lead people to think on a somewhat longer term, to think about tomorrow, next week and next month, instead of living for the day. This attitude is necessary for effective birth control. Thirdly, education also increases the potential for effective contraception, because birth control doesn’t just happen, especially not when efficient family planning facilities are not or hardly accessible or when there are opposing cultural or family values.

The influence of education on birth control has been demonstrated in a vast number of studies (James et al., 2012). It starts with primary education, but an even larger effect can be attained by investment in secondary education (Cohen, 2008). In a country like Niger, for example, women who didn’t finish primary school have on average 7.8 children. Women who did finish primary school have on average 6.7 children, while women who finished secondary school “only” have 4.6 children ( Fig. 6 ). The fertility of Niger would be a lot lower if more women could benefit from education. The tragedy of that country is that too many people fall in the category of those without a degree of primary school, with all its demographic consequences.

One achieves with education therefore a plural beneficial demographic effect on top of the important objective of human emancipation in itself. All this is of course not always true but depends on which form of “education”; I assume that we’re talking about education that teaches people the knowledge and skills to better take control of their own destiny.

It is one thing to get people motivated to practice birth control but obtaining actual effective contraception is quite another matter. Information concerning the efficient use of contraceptives and increasing the accessibility and affordability of contraceptives can therefore play an important role. There are an estimated 215 million women who would want to have contraception but don’t have the means (UNFPA, 2011). Investments in services to help with family planning are absolutely necessary and could already have great results in this group of women. But it’s no use to put the cart before the horse: if there is no intention to practice birth control, propaganda for and accessibility of contraception will hardly have any effect, as was demonstrated in the past. In Europe the lion’s share of the decline in fertility was realized with traditional methods, before the introduction of hormonal contraception in the sixties. There is often a problem of lack of motivation for birth control on the one hand, as a result of high child mortality and low schooling rates, and a lack of power in women who may be motivated to limit fertility but are confronted with male resistance on the other (Blanc, 2011; Do and Kurimoto, 2012). Empowerment of women is therefore essential, and education can play an important role in that process as well.

Population momentum

Even if all the people would suddenly practice birth control much more than is currently considered possible, the world population would still continue to grow for a while. This is the consequence of population momentum, a notion that refers to the phenomenon of demographic inertia, comparable to the phenomenon of momentum and inertia in the field of physics. Demographic growth is like a moving train: even when you turn off the engine, the movement will continue for a little while.

The power and direction of population momentum is dependent on the age structure of the population. Compare the population pyramids of Egypt and Germany ( Fig. 7 ). The one for Egypt has a pyramidal shape indeed, but the one for Germany looks more like an onion. As a consequence of high birth rates in the previous decades, the largest groups of Egyptians are to be found below the age of forty; the younger, the more voluminous the generation. Even if the current and future generations of Egyptians would limit their fertility strongly (as is indeed the case), the birth rate in Egypt would still continue to rise for quite some time, just because year after year more and more potential mothers and fathers reach the fertile ages. Egypt therefore clearly has a growth momentum.

Germany on the other hand has a negative or shrinking momentum: even if the younger generations of Germans would have a larger num ber of children than the generation of their own parents, the birth rate in Germany would still continue to decrease because fewer and fewer potential mothers and fathers reach the fertile ages.

The population momentum on a global scale is positive: even if fertility would decrease overnight to the replacement level, the world population would continue to grow with 40% (from 7 billion to 9.8 billion). Only the rich countries have a shrinking momentum, that is -3%. For Europe the momentum is -7%. The population momentum for the poorest countries in the world is +44%, that of Sub Saharan Africa +46% (Espenshade et al., 2011).

Consequences of the population explosion

The concerns about the consequences of population explosion started in the sixties. Milestone publications were the 1968 book The Population bomb by biologist Paul Ehrlich, the report of the Club of Rome from 1972 (The Limits to Growth) and the first World Population Plan of Action of the UN in 1974 among others.

In the world population debate, the general concerns involve mainly three interconnected consequences of the population explosion: 1) the growing poverty in the world and famine; 2) the exhaustion and pollution of natural resources essential to human survival; and 3) the migration pressure from the poor South to the rich North (Van Bavel, 2004).

Poverty and famine

The Malthusian line of thought continues to leave an important mark on the debate regarding the association between population growth and poverty: Malthus saw an excessive population growth as an important cause of poverty and famine. Rightfully this Malthusian vision has been criticized a lot. One must after all take the reverse causal relation into account as well: poverty and the related social circumstances (like a lack of education and good health care for children) contribute to high population growth as well.

Concerning famine: the production of food has grown faster since 1960 than the world population has, so nowadays the amount of food produced per person exceeds that which existed before the population explosion (Lam, 2011). The problem of famine isn’t as much an insufficient food production as it is a lack of fair distribution (and a lack of sustainable production, but that’s another issue). Often regions with famine have ecological conditions permitting sufficient production of food, provided the necessary investments in human resources and technology are made. The most important cause of famine is therefore not the population explosion. Famine is primarily a consequence of unequal distribution of food, which in turn is caused by social-economic inequality, lack of democracy and (civil) war.

Poverty and famine usually have mainly political and institutional causes, not demographic ones. The Malthusian vision, that sees the population explosion as the root of all evil, therefore has to be corrected ( Fig. 8 ). Rapid population growth can indeed hinder economical development and can thus pave the way for poverty. But this is only part of the story. As mentioned, poverty is also an underlying cause of rapid population growth. Social factors are at the base of both poverty and population growth. It’s those social factors that require our intervention: via investments in education and (reproductive) health care.

Impact on the environment

The impact of the population explosion on the environment is unquestionably high, but the size of the population represents only one aspect of this. In this regard it can be useful to keep in mind the simple I=PAT scheme: the ecological footprint or impact on the environment (I) can be regarded as the product of the size of the population (P), the prosperity or consumption level (A for affluence) and the technology used (T). The relationship between each of these factors is more complex than the I=PAT scheme suggests, but in any case the footprint I of a population of 1000 people is for example dependent on how many of those people drive a car instead of a bike, and of the emission per car of the vehicle fleet concerned.

The ecological footprint of the world population has increased tremendously the past decades and the growth of the world population has obviously played an important role in this. The other factors in the I=PAT scheme have however played a relatively bigger role than the demographic factor P. The considerable increase in the Chinese ecological footprint of the past decades for example, is more a consequence of the increased consumption of meat than of population growth (Peters et al., 2007; Liu et al., 2008). The carbon dioxide emission of China grew by 82% between 1990 and 2003, while the population only increased by 11% in that same period. A similar story exists for India: the population grew by less than 23% between 1990 and 2003, while the emission of carbon dioxide increased by more than 83% (Chakravarty et al., 2009). The consumption of water and meat in the world is increasing more rapidly than the population 3 . The consumption of water per person is for example threefold higher in the US than in China (Hoekstra and Chapagain, 2007). The African continent has at present the same number of inhabitants as Europe and North America together, over 1 billion. But the total ecological footprint of Europeans and Americans is many times higher than that of Africans (Ewing et al., 2010). Less than 18% of the world population is responsible for over 50% of the global carbon dioxide emission (Chakravarty et al., 2009).

If we are therefore concerned about the impact of the world population on the environment, we can do something about it immediately by tackling our own overconsumption: it’s something we can control and it has an immediate effect. In contrast, we know of the population growth that it will continue for some time anyhow, even if people in poor countries would practice much more birth control than we consider possible at present.

The population explosion has created an increasing migration pressure from the South to the North – and there is also important migration within and between countries in the South. But here as well the message is: the main responsibility doesn’t lie with the population growth but with economic inequality. The primary motive for migration was and is economic disparity: people migrate from regions with no or badly paid labour and a low standard of living to other regions, where one hopes to find work and a higher standard of living (Massey et al., 1993; Hooghe et al., 2008; IMO, 2013). Given the permanent population growth and economical inequality, a further increasing migration pressure is to be expected, irrespective of the national policies adopted.

It is sometimes expected that economic growth and increasing incomes in the South will slow down the migration pressure, but that remains to be seen. After all, it isn’t usually the poorest citizens in developing countries that migrate to rich countries. It is rather the affluent middle class in poor countries that have the means to send their sons and daughters to the North – an investment that can raise a lot of money via remittances to the families in the country of origin (IMO, 2013). There is after all a considerable cost attached to migration, in terms of money and human capital. Not everyone can bear those costs: to migrate you need brains, guts and money. With growing economic development in poor countries, an initial increase in migration pressure from those countries would be expected; the association between social-economic development and emigration is not linearly negative but follows the shape of a J turned upside down: more emigration at the start of economic development and a decline in emigration only with further development (De Haas, 2007).

7 Billion and counting… What is to be done?

A world population that needed some millennia before reaching the number of 1 billion people, but then added some billions more after 1920 in less than a century: the social, cultural, economic and ecological consequences of such an evolution are so complex that they can lead to fear and indifference at the same time. What kind of constructive reaction is possible and productive in view of such an enormous issue?

First of all: we need to invest in education and health care in Africa and elsewhere, not just as a humanitarian target per se but also because it will encourage the spread of birth control. Secondly, we need to encourage and support the empowerment of women, not just via education but also via services for reproductive health. This has triple desirable results for demographics: it will lead to more and more effective birth control, which in itself has a positive effect on the survival of children, which in turn again facilitates birth control.

Thirdly: because of the positive population momentum, the world population will certainly continue to grow in absolute figures, even though the yearly growth rate in percentages is already on the decline for several years. The biggest contribution we could make therefore, with an immediate favourable impact for ourselves and the rest of the world, is to change our consumption pattern and deal with the structural overconsumption of the world’s richest countries.

(1) Unless otherwise specified, all figures in this paragraph are based on the United Nations World Population Prospects, the 2012 Revision, http://esa.un.org/wpp/ . Concerning projections for the future, I reported the results of the Medium Variant. Apart from this variant, there are also high and low variants (those relying on scenarios implying respectively an extremely high and extremely low growth of the population) and a variant in which the fertility rates are fixed at the current levels. It is expected that the actual number will be somewhere between the highest and lowest variant and will be closest to the medium variant. That’s why I only report this latter value.

(2) In demography, the term «fertility» refers to the actual number of live births per women. By contrast, the term fecundity refers to reproductive capacity (irrespective of actual childbearing), see Habbema et al. (2004).

(3) See http://www.unwater.org/water-cooperation-2013/water-cooperation/facts-and-figures

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The world population explosion: causes, backgrounds and -projections for the future

Affiliation.

• 1 Centre for Sociological Research / Family & Population Studies (FaPOS), Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Leuven, Parkstraat 45 bus 3601, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
• PMID: 24753956
• PMCID: PMC3987379

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the total world population crossed the threshold of 1 billion people for the first time in the history of the homo sapiens sapiens. Since then, growth rates have been increasing -exponentially, reaching staggeringly high peaks in the 20th century and slowing down a bit thereafter. Total world population reached 7 billion just after 2010 and is expected to count 9 billion by 2045. This paper first charts the differences in population growth between the world regions. Next, the mechanisms behind unprecedented population growth are explained and plausible scenarios for future developments are discussed. Crucial for the long term trend will be the rate of decline of the number of births per woman, called total fertility. Improvements in education, reproductive health and child survival will be needed to speed up the decline of total fertility, particularly in Africa. But in all scenarios, world population will continue to grow for some time due to population momentum. Finally, the paper outlines the debate about the consequences of the population explosion, involving poverty and food security, the impact on the natural environment, and migration flows.

Key words: Fertility, family planning, world population, population growth, demographic transition, urbanization, population momentum, population projections.

Keywords: Fertility; demographic transition; family planning; population growth; population momentum; population projections; urbanization; world population.

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How Pew Research Center will report on generations moving forward

Journalists, researchers and the public often look at society through the lens of generation, using terms like Millennial or Gen Z to describe groups of similarly aged people. This approach can help readers see themselves in the data and assess where we are and where we’re headed as a country.

Pew Research Center has been at the forefront of generational research over the years, telling the story of Millennials as they came of age politically and as they moved more firmly into adult life . In recent years, we’ve also been eager to learn about Gen Z as the leading edge of this generation moves into adulthood.

But generational research has become a crowded arena. The field has been flooded with content that’s often sold as research but is more like clickbait or marketing mythology. There’s also been a growing chorus of criticism about generational research and generational labels in particular.

Recently, as we were preparing to embark on a major research project related to Gen Z, we decided to take a step back and consider how we can study generations in a way that aligns with our values of accuracy, rigor and providing a foundation of facts that enriches the public dialogue.

A typical generation spans 15 to 18 years. As many critics of generational research point out, there is great diversity of thought, experience and behavior within generations.

We set out on a yearlong process of assessing the landscape of generational research. We spoke with experts from outside Pew Research Center, including those who have been publicly critical of our generational analysis, to get their take on the pros and cons of this type of work. We invested in methodological testing to determine whether we could compare findings from our earlier telephone surveys to the online ones we’re conducting now. And we experimented with higher-level statistical analyses that would allow us to isolate the effect of generation.

What emerged from this process was a set of clear guidelines that will help frame our approach going forward. Many of these are principles we’ve always adhered to , but others will require us to change the way we’ve been doing things in recent years.

Here’s a short overview of how we’ll approach generational research in the future:

We’ll only do generational analysis when we have historical data that allows us to compare generations at similar stages of life. When comparing generations, it’s crucial to control for age. In other words, researchers need to look at each generation or age cohort at a similar point in the life cycle. (“Age cohort” is a fancy way of referring to a group of people who were born around the same time.)

When doing this kind of research, the question isn’t whether young adults today are different from middle-aged or older adults today. The question is whether young adults today are different from young adults at some specific point in the past.

To answer this question, it’s necessary to have data that’s been collected over a considerable amount of time – think decades. Standard surveys don’t allow for this type of analysis. We can look at differences across age groups, but we can’t compare age groups over time.

Another complication is that the surveys we conducted 20 or 30 years ago aren’t usually comparable enough to the surveys we’re doing today. Our earlier surveys were done over the phone, and we’ve since transitioned to our nationally representative online survey panel , the American Trends Panel . Our internal testing showed that on many topics, respondents answer questions differently depending on the way they’re being interviewed. So we can’t use most of our surveys from the late 1980s and early 2000s to compare Gen Z with Millennials and Gen Xers at a similar stage of life.

This means that most generational analysis we do will use datasets that have employed similar methodologies over a long period of time, such as surveys from the U.S. Census Bureau. A good example is our 2020 report on Millennial families , which used census data going back to the late 1960s. The report showed that Millennials are marrying and forming families at a much different pace than the generations that came before them.

Even when we have historical data, we will attempt to control for other factors beyond age in making generational comparisons. If we accept that there are real differences across generations, we’re basically saying that people who were born around the same time share certain attitudes or beliefs – and that their views have been influenced by external forces that uniquely shaped them during their formative years. Those forces may have been social changes, economic circumstances, technological advances or political movements.

When we see that younger adults have different views than their older counterparts, it may be driven by their demographic traits rather than the fact that they belong to a particular generation.

The tricky part is isolating those forces from events or circumstances that have affected all age groups, not just one generation. These are often called “period effects.” An example of a period effect is the Watergate scandal, which drove down trust in government among all age groups. Differences in trust across age groups in the wake of Watergate shouldn’t be attributed to the outsize impact that event had on one age group or another, because the change occurred across the board.

Changing demographics also may play a role in patterns that might at first seem like generational differences. We know that the United States has become more racially and ethnically diverse in recent decades, and that race and ethnicity are linked with certain key social and political views. When we see that younger adults have different views than their older counterparts, it may be driven by their demographic traits rather than the fact that they belong to a particular generation.

Controlling for these factors can involve complicated statistical analysis that helps determine whether the differences we see across age groups are indeed due to generation or not. This additional step adds rigor to the process. Unfortunately, it’s often absent from current discussions about Gen Z, Millennials and other generations.

When we can’t do generational analysis, we still see value in looking at differences by age and will do so where it makes sense. Age is one of the most common predictors of differences in attitudes and behaviors. And even if age gaps aren’t rooted in generational differences, they can still be illuminating. They help us understand how people across the age spectrum are responding to key trends, technological breakthroughs and historical events.

Each stage of life comes with a unique set of experiences. Young adults are often at the leading edge of changing attitudes on emerging social trends. Take views on same-sex marriage , for example, or attitudes about gender identity .

Many middle-aged adults, in turn, face the challenge of raising children while also providing care and support to their aging parents. And older adults have their own obstacles and opportunities. All of these stories – rooted in the life cycle, not in generations – are important and compelling, and we can tell them by analyzing our surveys at any given point in time.

When we do have the data to study groups of similarly aged people over time, we won’t always default to using the standard generational definitions and labels. While generational labels are simple and catchy, there are other ways to analyze age cohorts. For example, some observers have suggested grouping people by the decade in which they were born. This would create narrower cohorts in which the members may share more in common. People could also be grouped relative to their age during key historical events (such as the Great Recession or the COVID-19 pandemic) or technological innovations (like the invention of the iPhone).

By choosing not to use the standard generational labels when they’re not appropriate, we can avoid reinforcing harmful stereotypes or oversimplifying people’s complex lived experiences.

Existing generational definitions also may be too broad and arbitrary to capture differences that exist among narrower cohorts. A typical generation spans 15 to 18 years. As many critics of generational research point out, there is great diversity of thought, experience and behavior within generations. The key is to pick a lens that’s most appropriate for the research question that’s being studied. If we’re looking at political views and how they’ve shifted over time, for example, we might group people together according to the first presidential election in which they were eligible to vote.

With these considerations in mind, our audiences should not expect to see a lot of new research coming out of Pew Research Center that uses the generational lens. We’ll only talk about generations when it adds value, advances important national debates and highlights meaningful societal trends.

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Kim Parker is director of social trends research at Pew Research Center

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Example Of The Human Population Explosion On A Finite Planet Research Paper

Type of paper: Research Paper

Topic: Human , Population , Growth , World , Technology , Economics , Food , Environment

Words: 2000

Published: 02/09/2021

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Introduction

The increase of human population is a grave issue that is growing by shocking geometric progression. Each day, about two hundred thousand people die but in the contrary, about four hundred and fifty thousand others are born (Jones, Schoonbroodt & Tertilt, 2011). Indeed, this indicates that there are about two hundred and fifty thousand new people to feed each coming day. However, it is very hard to support infinite population growth on a finite planet; resources are becoming scare with each coming day. In this regard, a debate has come up, which rotates around two basic questions: whether an increased population is bad or good for welfare and human development and how the growth of the population responds to the shifting economic conditions (Jones, Schoonbroodt & Tertilt, 2011). In the course of the last century, economists handled such issues as distinctive subjects, directing the first problem in the welfare or resource economics realm and dealing with the second within the context of the fertility theories. However, it is increasingly clear that minimal progress can be realized without handling both issues simultaneously: undertaking the assessment of economic consequences of the increasing population calls for the consideration of feedback effects of tighter scarcity of resources on fertility. However, although the human population increasing at a very rapid rate and putting much pressure on the available resource taking appropriate measures such as using suitable technologies to increase food production will help to sustain human existence on the planet (Peretto, 2002).

Population Growth and Resources

Indeed, such recognition serves as the cause of double strands of the recent literature. The first strand is the “Unified Growth Theory”, which refers to a model that exploits the current day tools for dynamic analysis to offer constant explanations of historical development phases, starting from “Malthusian Stagnation” to the present day system of sustained increase in per capita incomes (Galor & Weil, 2011). Indeed, the “Unified Growth Theory” model’s two building blocks are the endogenous fertility as well as the assumption that consumer products are produced by using natural resources, mainly land, and human capital (Madsen, 2008). In this regard, such structure gives a highlight of the core mechanism behind the environment-economy interactions: the growth of population has an effect on the scarcity of natural resources as well as labor productivity, and at the same time, income dynamics stimulate feedback effects on fertility, which deter the growth of population in the future. The interaction between population and resources is studied in the literature about bio-economic systems that looks for ways to offer an explanation to increasing and falling of civilization. Indeed, such contributions draw clear connections between the population dynamics and the biological regeneration laws, which control resource availability. People work in a closed system and the stock of resources follows a particular logistic process that directly impacts harvesting choices. The relationship between the biological laws and population growth creates rich dynamics, encompassing “feast-famine equilibrium paths and/or environmental crises that eventually drive human society to extinction” (Taylor 2009, p. 1240). Indeed, the biological frameworks have been regulated to facilitate replication of the decline of the Easter Island as well as other similar historical episodes” (Good and Reuveny, 2009). Moreover, a number of authors have presented an argument that the economy of the Easter Island and served to extend the model to encompass manufactured gods, deliberate capital bequests as well as endogenous technological changes (Harford, 2000). It is reported that the carrying capacity of the planet during the prehistoric times was possibly not more than one hundred million people (The Olympian, 2014). However, in the absence of their prehistoric technologies as well as their ways of living, the number would possibly be far much less. The coming up of agriculture made it possible the population to increase more calling for having more practices that involved intensive use of land. During their peak, the agricultural practice might have served to sustain 3 billion human beings in poverty on a nearly vegetarian diet. At the present, the total number of people on earth is estimated at about seven billion (Ellis, 2013). However, with the present day industrial technologies, the FAO of the UN has made estimates that the over 9 billion individual that are expected to inhabit the earth by 2050 while the population approaches its peak could be supported provided that the essential investments in the infrastructure and favorable trade, food security and anti-poverty policies are implemented. According The Olympian (2014), human beings are currently utilizing the earth’s resources up to almost two times faster than what the plan can actually regenerate. It is projected that this will go up by three times faster in the course of the mid-twentieth century. Indeed, this means that, human beings are slowly but unavoidably obliterating the ability of the plant to sustain human beings and other living things. Being living things that have determination to live for the current day, human beings are blindly working toward a future that is bleak, which has severe competition for primary resources including water and food. Among the scientists, there are those who make predictions that there will be an ecological collapse before approaching the United Nations population projection in 2050. However, according The Olympian (2014), in order for human beings to have a chance to survive in the long-run, there is a need to do two main things. The first thing is to ensure stabilization of world population and the wealthier, developed nations have to consumer less nature resources, although this will not be easy. Indeed, in order to accommodate population growth in the consumption of resources among the developing countries, which have in the course of history experienced extreme poverty and hunger, individuals from the wealthier nations including the United States of America have to consume less (The Olympian 2014). According to Ellis (2013), it was only after a long period of research in the agriculture ecology in China that a point was reached why observations compelled researchers to see beyond the biologist’s blinders. Incapable of giving an explanation to how populations increased for thousands of years while raising the productivity levels of the same land, the researchers made a discovery that population growth has a tendency of overrunning food supply. Easter Boserup, an agricultural economist, offered theories that considered population growth as a driver of the productivity of land gave explanation to the data gathered in ways Malthus could never have done (Ellis, 2013). Indeed, the human sustenance science is intrinsically a social science. Certainly, neither chemistry nor physics, nor even biology is sufficient to comprehend the way it has been possible for a single species to engage in the reshaping of its own destiny as well as future of a whole planet. In this regard, this is “a science of the Anthroposcene” (Ellis, 2013). The notion that humans have to survive within the limits of the natural environment of earth does not accept the realities of the whole of the human history, and possibly the future; human beings are indeed niche creators. In this regard, they change ecosystems in order to be able to sustain themselves. The earth’s human-carrying capacity emanates from the human abilities of the social systems as well as the technologies more than from any limits of the environment. It is reported that, about two millenniums ago, human beings started out this path and the earth will never remain the same again (Ellis, 2013). Now is an opportune time for individual to stand up to take measure, the technological and social systems, which sustain human beings need to be improved. In essence, there is no valid environmental reason for human being to go without food in the current day or even in the future. Certainly, it is needless to utilize any additional land with an intention of sustaining humanity; increasing the productivity of land by utilizing technologies can promote international food supplies and there can be even some surplus. In this regard, this ought to be an objective that is more possible and more popular than ever before.

It has been established in this research that, although the human population increasing at a very rapid rate and putting much pressure on the available resource taking appropriate measures such as using suitable technologies to increase food production will help to sustain human existence on the planet. The current increase of human population is a grave issue that is growing by shocking geometric progression. Each day, about two hundred thousand people die but in the contrary, about four hundred and fifty thousand others are born. Indeed, this indicates that there are about two hundred and fifty thousand new people to feed each coming day. However, it is a quite task to support infinite population growth on a finite planet; resources are becoming scare with each coming day. It has been established that, for human beings to have a chance to survive in the long-run, there is a need to do two main things. The first thing is to ensure stabilization of world population and the wealthier, developed nations have to consumer less nature resources, although this will not be easy. Indeed, in order to accommodate population growth in the consumption of resources among the developing countries, which have in the course of history experienced extreme poverty and hunger, individuals from the wealthier nations including the United States of America have to consume less. The belief that humans have to survive within the limits of the natural environment of earth does not accept the realities of the whole of the human history, and possibly the future; human beings are indeed niche creators. In this regard, they change ecosystems in order to be able to sustain themselves. The earth’s human-carrying capacity emanates from the human abilities of the social systems as well as the technologies more than from any limits of the environment. Now is actually the right time for human beings to jointly stand up to take measure, the technological and social systems, which sustain human beings need to be improved. In essence, there is no valid environmental reason for human being to go without food in the current day or even in the future. Certainly, it is needless to utilize any additional land with an intention of sustaining humanity; increasing the productivity of land by utilizing technologies can promote international food supplies and there can be even some surplus.

Ellis, E. C. (2013). Overpopulation is not the problem. Retrieved from, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/opinion/overpopulation-is-not-the-problem.html?_r=0 Galor, O. (2011). Unified Growth Theory. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Galor, O. (2011). Unfied Growth Theory. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Good, D.H., & Reuveny, R. (2009). On the collapse of historical civilizations. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 91(4), 863-879. Harford, J. (2000). Methods of pricing common property use and some implications for optimal child-bearing and the social discount rate. Resource and Energy Economics, 22, 103-124. Jones, L.E., Schoonbroodt, A., Tertilt, M. (2010). “Fertility Theories: Can They Explain The Negative Fertility-Income Relationship?”. NBER Chapters, in: Demography and the Economy, pp. 43-100. National Bureau of Economic Research. Madsen, J.B. (2008). Semi-endogenous versus Schumpeterian Growth Models: Testing the Knowledge Production Function Using International Data. Journal of Economic Growth 13, 1-26. Peretto, P.F. and Smulders, S. (2002). Technological Distance, Growth And Scale Effects. Economic Journal 112 (481): 603-624. Taylor, M.S. (2009). Innis Lecture: Environmental crises: past, present, and future. Canadian The Olympian, (2014). Survival depends on consuming less, fewer people. Retrieved from, http://www.theolympian.com/2014/07/11/3219445_survival-depends-on-consuming.html?rh=1

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The Reporter

The Economics of Generative AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is not a new field. The term was coined in 1956, but the field has only recently begun having significant effects on the economy.

Research in AI went through three eras. Early work focused primarily on symbolic systems with hand-coded rules and instructions. In the 1980s, expert systems, which consisted of hundreds or thousands of “if…then” rules drawn from interviews with human experts, helped diagnose diseases and make loan recommendations, but with limited commercial success.

Later, the focus shifted to machine learning systems, including “supervised learning” systems trained to make predictions based on large datasets of human-labeled examples. As computational power increased, deep learning algorithms became increasingly successful, leading to an explosion of interest in AI in the 2010s.

More recently, even larger models using unsupervised or self-supervised systems have become a major focus of the field. Large-language models (LLMs) — trained on massive amounts of text to simply predict the next word in a sequence — have astounded the public with their ability to produce meaningful and remarkable output. These systems have been found to outperform humans for a growing range of knowledge-intensive tasks: taking the bar exam, for instance. In addition, studies show that access to LLMs and other types of generative AI tools can help human workers improve their own performance.

In the past year, a growing body of work has explored how new AI tools might impact productivity in applications as diverse as coding, writing, and management consulting. 1

In research with Lindsey Raymond, we analyze the effects of generative AI on worker productivity in the context of technical customer support. 2 Our study is based on data from over 5,179 agents, about 1,300 of whom were given access to an LLM-based assistant that provided real-time suggestions for communicating with customers. The system, trained on millions of examples of successful and unsuccessful conversations, provided suggestions that the agents could use, adapt, or reject. The tool was rolled out in phases, creating quasi-experimental evidence on its causal effects.

We found significant improvements in worker productivity as measured by the number of customer issues workers were able to resolve per hour. Within four months, treated agents were outperforming nontreated agents who had been on the job for over twice as long.

On average, worker productivity increased by 14 percent. These gains were concentrated among the lowest quintile of workers, whether measured by experience or prior productivity, where there were productivity gains of up to 35 percent. In contrast, the top quintile saw negligible gains and, in some cases, even small decreases in the quality of conversations, as measured by customer satisfaction. This pattern is reflective of how the system is trained: by observing successful conversations, the system is able to glean the behavior of the most skilled agents and pass on these behaviors as suggestions to novice workers.

Did the system deskill the workforce? Another natural experiment suggests not. As with most large systems, there were occasional outages when the system unexpectedly became unavailable. Workers who had previously been using the system now had to answer questions without access to it, and nonetheless they continued to outperform those who had never used the system. This suggests that the system helped them learn, and retain, answers.

Our results point to the possibility that — in contrast with earlier waves of information technology that largely benefited higher-skill workers — generative AI technologies could particularly benefit workers at the lower or middle levels of the skills distribution. Drawing on these and other results, David Autor sees opportunities for the recent waves of AI to help rebuild the middle class by increasing the value of output from their labor. 3

Advances in AI technologies and algorithmic design can yield improvements beyond direct measures of productivity. For example, we saw evidence in our study that AI assistance improves the experience of work for treated agents, as measured by the processing of conversation transcripts: customers spoke more kindly to agents and were less likely to ask to speak to a supervisor. These effects were likely driven both by agents’ improved social skills and increased access to technical knowledge as a result of chat assistance.

Indeed, there is growing evidence that generative AI tools may outperform humans in an area traditionally considered a source of strength for humans relative to machines: empathy and social skills. One study of doctors’ responses to patient questions found that an LLM-based chatbot provided answers that were judged by expert human evaluators to be more detailed, higher quality, and 10 times more likely to be considered empathetic. 4

Finally, innovations in AI systems may further improve the functioning of current AI tools. For example, Li, Raymond, and Peter Bergman explore how algorithm design can improve the quality of interview decisions in the context of professional services hiring. They find that while traditional supervised learning systems — which look for workers who match historical patterns of success in the firm’s training data — select higher-quality workers relative to human hiring, they are also far less likely to select applicants who are Black or Hispanic. In contrast, reinforcement learning and contextual bandit models — which value learning about workers who have not traditionally been represented in the firm’s training data — are able to deliver similar improvements in worker quality while also distributing job opportunities more broadly.

While the effects of AI on productivity and work practices are now evident not only in a number of laboratory settings but also in business applications, it may take longer for them to show up in aggregate statistics. Brynjolfsson, Daniel Rock, and Chad Syverson discuss a set of reasons why the effects of AI might not quickly change aggregate productivity numbers. 5

For one thing, labor productivity is typically defined as GDP per hour worked. But GDP as it is traditionally measured may miss many of the benefits of an increasingly digital economy that creates free goods and makes them more widely available while also improving the quality, variety, or convenience of existing goods. An alternative metric, GDP-B, seeks to address these challenges by assessing the benefits of goods and services, not the amount spent. 6

Furthermore, general purpose technologies like AI are likely to experience a lag between their initial adoption and observable improvements in productivity. In a second study, Brynjolfsson, Rock, and Syverson model this “Productivity J-Curve.” 7 As with other types of information technology, the initial phase of AI adoption is characterized by time-consuming complementary investments, including the realignment of business processes, the integration of new technologies into existing workflows, and the upskilling of the workforce. As noted by Brynjolfsson and Lorin Hitt, these adjustments are costly and may create valuable intangible assets, but neither the costs nor the benefits are typically accounted for when measuring a firm’s output. 8 As a result, productivity as it is conventionally measured may initially be seen as stagnating or even falling. However, as these technological and organizational complements are gradually implemented, the productivity benefits of AI begin to materialize, marked by an upward trajectory in the J-curve.

The Productivity J-Curve model implies that productivity metrics fail to capture the full extent of benefits during the initial stages of AI adoption, leading to underestimation of AI’s potential.

The ultimate economic effects of generative AI will depend not only upon how much it boosts productivity and changes work in specific cases, but also on how much of the economy it is likely to affect. As noted by Daron Acemoglu and Autor, occupations can be broken down into specific tasks. 9 Applying this insight, Brynjolfsson, Tom Mitchell, and Rock look at 18,156 tasks in the O-NET taxonomy and find that most occupations include at least some tasks that could be automated or augmented by machine learning, though significant redesign would typically be required to realize the full potential of the technology. 10 Building on this work, Tyna Eloundou, Sam Manning, Pamela Mishkin, and Rock estimate that approximately 80 percent of the US workforce could have at least 10 percent of their work tasks either automated or augmented by the introduction of LLMs, while around 19 percent of workers could see at least half of their tasks affected. 11

Hulten’s theorem states that a first-order approximation of the productivity effects of a technology is the share of the economy affected multiplied by its average productivity impact. There is evidence that both the potential productivity impact and the potential share of the economy affected are significant in the case of generative AI, suggesting that the ultimate effects may be substantial, though, as implied by the Productivity J-Curve, they may take some time to be realized. 12

The field of economics itself is not immune to the effects of generative AI. Students of economics are using the tools to help with their assignments, requiring a rethinking of teaching methods. We and our colleagues are using the tools to help with research and writing; we used LLMs to help with aspects of the preparation of this article. Anton Korinek described six ways that LLMs can assist economists: ideation and feedback, writing, background research, data analysis, coding, and mathematical derivations. 13 Jens Ludwig and Sendhil Mullainathan go further, showing that AI models can be used to make the first stage of the scientific process — hypothesis generation — more systematic. 14

As discussed by Brynjolfsson and Gabriel Unger, important policy choices are emerging regarding AI’s effects on productivity, industrial concentration, and inequality. 15 For instance, on the question of inequality, the distinction between technology used for automation versus augmentation or, more formally, AI that substitutes for rather than complements labor, can have significant effects on the distribution of income and bargaining power. 16 Brynjolfsson has argued that either approach can boost productivity but has noted that a focus on human-like AI can lead to a “Turing Trap” by reducing worker bargaining power. As AI continues to grow in power, so too does the need for economic research to better understand how we can harness its benefits while mitigating its risks.

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More from nber.

“ Experimental Evidence on the Productivity Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence, ” Noy S, Zhang W. Science 381(6654), July 2023, pp. 187–192. “ Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality, ” Dell’Acqua F, McFowland III E, Mollick E, Lifshitz-Assaf H, Kellogg KC, Rajendran S, Krayer L, Candelon F, Lakhani KR. Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 24-013, September 2023.

“ Generative AI at Work, ” Brynjolfsson E, Li D, Raymond LR. NBER Working Paper 31161, November 2023.

“ Applying AI to Rebuild Middle Class Jobs, ” Autor D. NBER Working Paper 32140. February 2024.

“ Comparing Physician and Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Responses to Patient Questions Posted to a Public Social Media Forum, ” Ayers JW, Poliak A, Dredze M, Leas EC, Zhu Z, Kelley JB, Faix DJ, Goodman AM, et. al. JAMA Internal Medicine 183(6), April 2023, pp. 589–596.

“ Artificial Intelligence and the Modern Productivity Paradox: A Clash of Expectations and Statistics, ” Brynjolfsson E, Rock D, Syverson C. NBER Working Paper 24001, November 2017.

“ GDP-B: Accounting for the Value of New and Free Goods in the Digital Economy, ” Brynjolfsson E, Collis A, Diewert WE, Eggers F, Fox KJ. NBER Working Paper 25695, March 2019.

“ The Productivity J-Curve: How Intangibles Complement General Purpose Technologies, ” Brynjolfsson E, Rock D, Syverson C. NBER Working Paper 25148, January 2020, and American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 13(1), January 2021, pp. 333–372.

“ Beyond Computation: Information Technology, Organizational Transformation and Business Performance, ” Brynjolfsson E, Hitt LM. Journal of Economic Perspectives , 14(4), Fall 2000, pp. 23–48.

“ Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings, ” Acemoglu D, Autor D. NBER Working Paper 16082, June 2010. Published as “Chapter 12 - Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings” in Handbook of Labor Economics 4(B), 2011, pp. 1043–1171.

“ What Can Machines Learn, and What Does It Mean for Occupations and the Economy? ” Brynjolfsson E, Mitchell T, Rock D. AEA Papers and Proceedings 108, May 2018, pp. 43–47.

“ GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models, ” Eloundou T, Manning S, Mishkin P, Rock D. arXiv , August 2023.

“ Machines of Mind: The Case for an AI-Powered Productivity Boom, ” Baily MN, Brynjolfsson E, Korinek A. Brookings Institution, May 10, 2023.

“ Generative AI for Economic Research: Use Cases and Implications for Economists, ” Korinek A, Journal of Economic Literature 61(4), December 2023, pp. 1281–1317.

“ Machine Learning as a Tool for Hypothesis Generation, ” Ludwig J, Mullainathan S. NBER Working Paper 31017, March 2023.

“ The Macroeconomics of Artificial Intelligence, ” Brynjolfsson E, Unger G. International Monetary Fund, December 2023.

“ The Turing Trap: The Promise & Peril of Human-Like Artificial Intelligence, ” Brynjolfsson E. Daedalus 151(2), Spring 2022, pp. 272–287. An earlier version of this argument was published as Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy , Brynjolfsson E, McAfee A. Digital Frontier Press, 2011.

NBER periodicals and newsletters may be reproduced freely with appropriate attribution.

In addition to working papers , the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals — the NBER Reporter , the NBER Digest , the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability , the Bulletin on Health , and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship  — as well as online conference reports , video lectures , and interviews .

© 2023 National Bureau of Economic Research. Periodical content may be reproduced freely with appropriate attribution.

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