User talk:04elhowells

Esther Boserup

Esther Boserup was born on May 18th 1910 and died on September 24th 1999. She studied economical and agricultural development and university and later worked at many international organisations including the United Nations. She was also a writer, and has written serveral books, the most notable being ‘The conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure.’

Boserup's theories

Esther offers a hopeful alternative to Malthus. The world population is reaching the point when the food supply is near at exhaustion. Malthus says that in order for life to continue, the extra people have to die. However, Boserup says that you just have to upgrade the productivity of the food supply. Under pressure of numbers, with more mouths to feed, people put more labour and more intense effort into feeding themselves, and find ways to get more food production out of the land. They cultivate the land more intensively, they add extra manure, extra fertiliser, extra water and improve their crops. They invent their way out of the Malthusian crisis. Also, the Malthusian trap may even drive the development of technology.

Case Study - Mauritious

Mauritius is an island county of 1860 km2 in area, located off the East coast of Africa. Farming and fishing are its main ventures, with agriculture accounting for 10% of its GDP. This is comprehensible since it has fertile soils and a tropical climate. It exports are divided into four main categories: sugar (accounting for 32%), garments (accounting for 31%), plastics (accounting for 32%) and others (accounting for 5%.) In 1992, the island had a population of 1,094,000 people. By 2025, the population is expected to increase to 1,365,000. This calculates to a growth rate of 1.45% with a doubling time of 47 years. Its fertility rate is 2.17 children per woman. You can easily see how fluctuating the population growth has been in Mauritius. At first it stayed at a more or less constant level because there were almost equal values of birth and death rates. ABirth rate then rose considerably in the 1950s, from 35 per thousand to over 45 per thousand. Not long after, the death rate decreased from 30 per thousand to 15 per thousand. There was presure on the country for resources because of the rising population, because it made the rate of natural increase very high. At this point the government decided that they have to do somehting. They put forward things such as family planning, improved health care, a restriction on early marriages, and the improvement of womens status. The government also worked on diversifying agriculture, invested in industry and improved trading links. After some time, it was easy to see people attitude towards family sizes change. There was an improvement in education and work opportunities for women, so that they would be more interested in getting a good career than having a family. Esther Boserup said that 'necessity is the mother of invention', and this was proved during the chaotic times in Mauritious.