The Malthusian theory hypothesizes that the natural environment imposes various capacity constraints on human population growth and that population size has been and will be checked by these constraints. In such a classical theory, which was presumably motivated by observations of the ancient world, population might be the most important dynamic variable, although its role is rather passive: population is a variable that would be affected by, but would not affect, the environment. Boserup (1981), however, sees the role of population in the development of human economy as more consequential. She gave many persuasive examples that showed that, at least for the period up to the mid-twentieth century, population size might be a variable which actively spurred technological progress. This is also the viewpoint held by Lee (1986) and Pryor and Maurer (1982). After the Industrial Revolution, the role of population in economic dynamics, along with the reduction of mortality fluctuations and the increasing control of female fertility, evidently became secondary. The key variable that dominates the analysis of economic dynamics in the neoclassical growth theory along the lines of Solow (1956) is capital (or per capita capital). In Solow’s growth model, the role of population is minimal in the steady state: neither the level nor the growth rate of the steady-state per capita consumption has anything to do with the size of a population; only the steady-state per capita income level will be affected by the population growth rate. The growth pattern in the latter half of the twentieth century is markedly different. A key feature of our recent growth experience is the rapid innovation of new technologies. Modern growth theory has embraced the concept of increasing returns to explain such a unique growth pattern. However, various versions of the theory of increasing returns turn out to be necessarily linked to population. The hypothesis of learning by doing implies that growth in productivity is an increasing function of aggregate production, which is itself positively related to the size of population.
