The nature of interactions between population and economic development long has
been of considerable concern. There have been dire Malthusian prognostics that
population growth inevitably eventually leads to subsistence-level standards of living
and therefore should be limited by active and direct governmental policies. But there also has
been increasing recognition of the complicated interactions between population and
development, which leads to much more qualified conclusions about the nature of relations
between population and development, and greater appreciation of the need for a good
understanding of the basic population-development micro relations in order to predict better
developments and to formulate better policies.