Three MSc student projects for
Population Matters
David Newton
Dr Newton is Visiting Senior Fellow
at the department of Management, London School of Economics
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DOI: 10.3197/jps.2016.1.1.59
Licensing: This article is Open Access (CC BY 4.0).
How to Cite:
Newton, D. 2016. 'Three MSc student projects for Population Matters'. The Journal of Population and Sustainability 1(1): 59–63.
https://doi.org/10.3197/jps.2016.1.1.59
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Introduction
This article is about a number of
studies conducted by students for Population Matters in 2015. The MSc in
Management Science offered by LSE is a one-year programme which covers various
analytic, statistical and problem structuring techniques. By its nature it is
an applied science, and the climax of the programme is a summer project, in
which students tackle real-world problems for a variety of sponsor
organisations.
For the students, this is an opportunity
to take the skills and techniques they have learnt and act as a genuine
consultant, working with and within organisations to provide valuable insight
and influence key decisions. For the organisations, they get access to bright
minds backed up by the LSE’s world-class academic staff. Sponsor organisations
come from many sectors including health, finance, logistics, housing,
education, tourism, publishing, media research, and the third sector.
LSE Management Science students have
conducted projects for Population Matters for several years, analysing the
impact of population growth on matters as diverse as health, housing, energy,
jobs, education, and biodiversity. Initially these projects focused mainly on
the UK but in recent years they have taken a more global perspective. This
article summarises three reports from projects in 2015. The full reports will
be made available on the Population Matters website.
Project 1: Mothers’ Index by Guangjie Shi
Save the Children, a major
international charity, devised the Mothers’ Index (MI) as a way to compare the
quality of life for women in countries around the world, based on certain core
criteria. While the MI does not include any specific reference to population,
there is good reason to expect that population growth may influence many
factors which are included. The aim of this project is to assess whether
demographic indicators, particularly population growth rate and total fertility
rate (TFR, the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime), correlate
with ranking on MI.
Over the period from 2000-2014, MI
has been constructed in 3 different ways. For the first two of these, the index
was applied to all countries while for the third, countries were divided into 3
tiers – developed, developing and least developed. This study correlates
population factors with both MI as a whole, and key individual components of
the index, over the spectrum of countries for which full information is
available. Some global data analysis was presented, but much of the analysis
focused on small groups of countries, closely related to each other
geographically.
There was a broad general correlation
in which countries with a high population growth rate were associated with a
poor – and deteriorating – MI. However, it was clear that in developed,
industrialised countries, the correlation between population growth and MI
ranking was relatively weak, whereas for developing and least developed
countries, population growth was a much clearer indicator of the likely MI. To
take two extreme examples, the MI of South Korea rose to the top of its tier as
its population stabilised (due to firm government policies), whereas the MI for
Niger (with the highest TFR in the world) remained at the bottom.
In some parts of the world, such as
the Arab oil producing countries, rapid population growth was not associated
with a falling of MI ranking, probably due to the affluence of these countries
and perhaps because much of the population increase is due to immigration.
Population growth is fastest in sub-Saharan Africa and this is strongly
reflected in the poor Mothers’ index for many countries in this region. The
sparkling exceptions are Rwanda and Ethiopia, where governments have focused
more on family planning and have made considerable progress in stabilising
their populations. Rwanda has also made giant leaps forward in education since
the genocide in 1994. This suggests governments should focus on both education
and reproductive health to promote development.
The study proposes that while Mothers’
Index stresses education, it would be of more value if it included an explicit
consideration of population growth in each country. Another important aspect
that is not explicitly addressed by the Mothers’ Index is income inequality.
This is of note in Central American countries where the Gini index (a measure
of inequality) is highest. Amongst large countries, inequality is most evident
in India where the elite have high quality health and other services, but the
poor majority have much less.
In summary, it is concluded that
there is an overall correlation between population growth and Mothers’ index,
particularly in developing and least developed countries. The Mothers’ Index
would be improved if it included explicit factors related to population growth
and income inequality.
Project 2: Correlating population
growth with Real GDP growth by Ciying Chen
National GDP growth statistics are
prominently reported and avidly followed, because it is usually assumed that
real national GDP growth corresponds to a rise in income per person, and
ultimately higher living standards. However, it can be argued that it is real
GDP per capita that is more likely to reflect the
outcome experienced at an individual level, which means that population growth
needs to be taken into account. An earlier student project had investigated the
UK economy, and found that despite forecast GDP growth, GDP per capita would be
static until 2030 after taking into account population growth in this period.
In 2015, the methodology used in the
UK analysis was extended and applied to other EU member countries, taking
population, GDP and inflation data from 1992 to 2014. The countries selected
were UK, France, Germany and Italy, the four largest countries, plus Cyprus and
Latvia, which had the highest and lowest population growth rates respectively.
The analysis found different
correlations between population growth and GDP Growth. In the UK, GDP growth
was positively correlated with population growth. This could be because as
population grew, more investments were being made in infrastructure. In Greece,
France and Italy, however, population growth was negatively correlated with GDP
growth. These countries had a shrinking ageing population. Consequently fewer
working-aged people were creating GDP, shared among a higher percentage of aged
people. This might explain the negative correlation.
In Cyprus and Latvia, GDP growth was
primarily (and negatively) correlated with inflation. Both countries
experienced high levels of inflation during the period under analysis.
Overall, the results suggested that
it was not just population growth that had a bearing on real GDP per capita,
but the change in demographic structure, which could be the explored further in
future projects.
Project 3: Comparative study of the
impact of Population Momentum across four countries by Yushu
Zou
An important factor in projecting
future population growth is the phenomenon known as ‘population momentum’. This
is the name given to the factor that, for countries which have a fertility rate
above the replacement rate, even if this were to fall to the replacement rate
immediately, the population would continue to increase for a considerable time.
The main objective of the study was
to is to explore the effects of several demographic indicators, namely the
total fertility rate, mean age of childbearing (MAC) and life expectancy on
population growth. The project also studied the momentum effect and its
associated population ageing during the demographic transition process towards
a stationary population.
Four countries were studied in this
project, including China, India, Nigeria and Germany. A cohort model was built
to forecast future population, assuming different demographic indicators.
Second, following Preston (1997), the momentum factor was calculated, which is
an indicator that measures the extent of momentum effect, for each country.
Third, applying the method in Andreev et al (2013), the contribution of each
demographic indicator to population growth was calculated.
The study found that TFR is
positively correlated with population growth, most notably in Germany, where if
TFR increased by one child, the population in 2050 would increase by 77%
compared to its population size in 2010. Surprisingly, MAC is positively correlated
with population growth for China and German, but negatively for India and
Nigeria. This is because delaying childbearing would raise fertility among the
more populous cohort of older woman in China and German, thereby increasing the
population.
Comparing the momentum factor across
the four countries, Nigeria has a highest at 1.45, implying that its population
would increase by 45 per cent even if the fertility rate in Nigeria were
suddenly to drop to the replacement level today. The momentum factors for
China, India and Germany are 1.07, 1.42 and 0.71 respectively. The negative
momentum effect in Germany implies that population in Germany will continue to
decline even if the TFR were raised to the replacement level.
Turning to the contribution of demographic
factors to population growth, in Nigeria the biggest single contributory factor
is fertility, while in India it is the increase in life expectancy, plus the
momentum effect, which contribute most to population growth.
References
Andreev, K., Kantorová,
V., & Bongaarts, J. (2013). Demographic
components of future population growth. United Nations Population
Division, Technical Paper, (2013/3).
Preston, S. H., & Guillot, M.
(1997). Population dynamics in an age of declining fertility. Genus, 53(3), pp.15-31.