Lecture

Population Growth and Prosperity

Graph Chat

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.

In course

HUM-471: Economic growth and sustainability I

This course examines growth from various angles: economic growth, growth in the use of resources, need for growth, limits to growth, sustainable growth, population growth. Although grounded in economics, it takes up elements from many other disciplines. ...

Description

This lecture explores the relationship between population growth and prosperity, discussing whether population growth hinders greater prosperity. It delves into the impact of demographic growth on economic growth, the additional human contribution to job markets and innovation, and the historical correlation between population growth and technological advancements. The lecture also examines the implications of population growth on planetary resources, the concept of ideal population density, and the environmental consequences of population increase. Various perspectives on the Earth's carrying capacity and strategies for sustainable development are presented, emphasizing the importance of demographic factors in shaping societal and environmental outcomes.

Instructor

Philippe Thalmann

Philippe Thalmann was born in Lausanne in 1963. He graduated in Economics from the University of Lausanne in 1984, where he earned a postgraduate diploma in Economics in 1986. Mr. Thalmann entered the doctoral program in Economics of Harvard University (Cambridge, U.S.A.) in 1986, which he completed with a Ph.D. in 1990. His dissertation is entitled: "Essays in the Economics of Government Revenues and Spending". Returning to Switzerland, he was hired as an assistant professor first at the University of Geneva (teachings in Public Economics), then at the University of Lausanne (teachings in Econometrics and Introductory Economics). Since 1994, Mr. Thalmann is associate professor of Economics as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne.

Official source

Related concepts (32)

Projections of population growth

Population projections are attempts to show how the human population statistics might change in the future. These projections are an important input to forecasts of the population's impact on this planet and humanity's future well-being. Models of population growth take trends in human development and apply projections into the future. These models use trend-based-assumptions about how populations will respond to economic, social and technological forces to understand how they will affect fertility and mortality, and thus population growth.

Population decline

Population decline, also known as depopulation, is a reduction in a human population size. Over the long term, stretching from prehistory to the present, Earth's total human population has continued to grow; however, current projections suggest that this long-term trend of steady population growth may be coming to an end. Until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the global population grew very slowly, at about 0.04% per year. After about 1800, the growth rate accelerated to a peak of 2.

World population

In demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently living. It was estimated by the United Nations to have exceeded eight billion in mid-November 2022. It took over 200,000 years of human prehistory and history for the human population to reach one billion and only 219 years more to reach 8 billion. The human population has experienced continuous growth following the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the end of the Black Death in 1350, when it was nearly 370,000,000.

Population dynamics

Population dynamics is the type of mathematics used to model and study the size and age composition of populations as dynamical systems. Population dynamics has traditionally been the dominant branch of mathematical biology, which has a history of more than 220 years, although over the last century the scope of mathematical biology has greatly expanded. The beginning of population dynamics is widely regarded as the work of Malthus, formulated as the Malthusian growth model.

Technological change

Technological change (TC) or technological development is the overall process of invention, innovation and diffusion of technology or processes.From [[The New Palgrave Dictionary of technical change" by S. Metcalfe. • "biased and biased technological change" by Peter L. Rousseau. • "skill-biased technical change" by Giovanni L. Violante.

Related lectures (64)

Demography and Sustainable Development: Global Perspectives

Explores the relationship between demography and sustainable development, focusing on historical population growth and the implications for future trends.

Decoupling Economic Growth from Carbon Emissions

Addresses the need for significant CO2 intensity reduction to achieve climate targets while examining the interplay between economic growth and carbon emissions.

Recycling and Sustainable Development: Challenges and Solutions

Examines the role of recycling in sustainable development, addressing its limitations and the importance of a circular economy.

Urbanization & Population Growth

Explores future urban population growth, environmental impact, and demographic transition.

Demography & Population Growth