Economic development for an exploding population

A journal article on economic development for an expanding population.I could use this occasion to come up with lots of facts and figures on population explosion and economic development. Alternatively, I could expand on the nature and use of mathematical computer models of population or socioeconomic development, which is my field of research. I am not going to do either of these. What I am going to do is to look at the development needs and problems of a country faced with an exploding population from my personal point of view, and on the assumption that Rhodesia, or if you prefer Zimbabwe, will emerge from its present political problems with a stable government, whatever its political flavour might be. I do believe that this symposium was organised in the spirit of this assumption, and with this hope, for where there is no hope there is no way

Trends in poverty and inequality since the political transition

Using a constructed data series and another data series based on the All Media and Products surveys (AMPS), this paper explores trends in poverty and income distribution over the post-transition period. To steer clear of an unduly optimistic conclusion, assumptions are chosen that would tend to show the least decline in poverty. Whilst there were no strong trends in poverty for the period 1995 to 2000, both data series show a considerable decline in poverty after 2000, particularly in the period 2002-2004. Poverty dominance testing shows that this decline is independent of the poverty line chosen or whether the poverty headcount, the poverty ratio or the poverty severity ratio are used as measure. We find likely explanations for this strong and robust decline in poverty in the massive expansion of the social grant system as well as possibly in improved job creation in recent years. Whilst the collective income of the poor (using our definition of poverty) was only R27 billion in 2000, the grants (in constant 2000 Rand values) have expanded by R22 billion since. Even if the grants were not well targeted at the poor (and in the past they have been), a large proportion of this spending must have reached the poor, thus leaving little doubt that poverty must have declined substantially