Economic growth is likely to affect population trends in a numbers of ways. Some population related variables that can be affected including:
• Birth rate
• Life expectancy
• And population increase/decrease.
The assumption in this paper is that when there is increased economic growth, the capita shall be used in various sectors of the economy. Here probably we are talking of a capitalistic economy where the distribution of resources is determined by the market forces of demand and supply. By economic growth in this case I am referring to an increase in the GDP per capita. We also assume that there is fairly equal distribution of wealth in the economy. The assumption also is that the country or world is in a state of stability. I will look at how economic growth is likely to affect each of the variables related to population and how ultimately that affects the total population growth.
Firstly economic growth is likely to affect the birth rate. If people have enough money they would have good food. Having good food ensures that the children who are borne are healthy. They have a high chance for survival. People with money can have prenatal medical check ups. That ensures that babies are born with minimum complications. That also reduces deaths of the mothers during giving birth or from related complications. Economic growth is likely to reduce birth rate. Looking at the current situation world over, countries with higher economic growth are having a lower birth rate as compared to those with lower economic growth. Examples of countries that have low birth rates are Germany and Japan, among others. One factor that is likely to lower birth rates is education and family planning care. If women and even men are educated on family planning issues they are likely to have family planning that lowers the birth rate. Education in general promotes better decision making even with issues related to number of children couples want to have. More educated people are likely to follow world trends better than the less educated ones.

High economic growth is likely to lead to higher life expectancy. This is so because people with money are more able to buy health food stuffs. They are likely to have better medication and medical facilities. For example countries like USA have better technology to deal with diseases such as cancer, malaria and other communicable diseases. I want to give an example of my country Zimbabwe. There are only two hospitals in Zimbabwe that give treatment for cancer. There is very little medicine for cancer inn Zimbabwe. That means more people in Zimbabwe are likely to die from cancer than the case would be in America, even if the two countries had the same population. The supply of ARVS to deal with HIV/AIDs in Zimbabwe is still very low. Poor countries seem to have high mortality rates than rich countries. This means more people get into old age. In countries with sound economic situation, where there is low birth rate and high life expectancy, population is likely to grow in the short run but decrease in the long run. This will lead to stable population growth thereafter, hence promoting sustainability.

From this discussion it seems that economic growth is likely to affect birth rate and life expectancy. That will ultimately affect population growth. The other population patterns which are affected include the ration of youths to the elderly. Countries with better economic performance are likely to have stable population growth than the developing countries.

Reference

http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/articles/CATONEW.txt http://www.cmaj.ca/content/181/5/281.full http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/economic-growth