Chapter 12 Economic approaches to population growth This chapter presents a discussion on economic approaches to population growth. This chapter reviews the principal analytical approaches of the past several decades to the study of the relationship between population growth and economic development. Migration and urbanization are treated only insofar as necessary for a coherent treatment of population growth itself. The chapter describes demographic change in developing countries over the past three decades. It also reviews the macroeconomic literature on the consequences of high population growth rates in developing countries covering both partial and general equilibrium approaches. Economists have proferred two rationales for a public policy to influence private fertility behavior .The first is externalitiesthat the social costs of children may exceed their private costs. The second rationale is the proposition that the market for contraceptive information and possibly for certain contraceptive services is poor especially in developing countries. This second rationale is important in justifying family planning programs irrespective of any consensus on the economic consequences of population growth.