Having a large population doesn't guarantee the citizens of a country a better standard of living. Neither does having a small population. Neither is a perceived link between population growth and economic growth always supported by historical fact - there have been periods when populations have grown but got poorer, and when populations have declined but got richer. The link can confuse cause and effect. A declining population usually results from declining employment, for example. To simplify, regional job losses resulted from the death of coal mining - coal mining did not stop because of local population loss. Economists have always suspected that population influences
Having a large population doesn't guarantee the citizens of a country a better standard of living. Neither does having a small population. Neither is a perceived link between population growth and economic growth always supported by historical fact - there have been periods when populations have grown but got poorer, and when populations have declined but got richer. The link can confuse cause and effect. A declining population usually results from declining employment, for example. To simplify, regional job losses resulted from the death of coal mining - coal mining did not stop because of local population loss. Economists have always suspected that population influences