Population Growth and the Take-Off Hypothesis

Harvey Leibenstein
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Harvey Leibenstein: University of California

Chapter Chapter 10 in The Economics of Take-Off into Sustained Growth, 1963, pp 170-184 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Like Pirandello’s ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’ Professor Rostow has given us an interesting historical hypothesis in search of a theory.1 While this quip exaggerates the case, since the Economic Journal (1956) articles do have many statements about economic behaviour, nevertheless, I believe it is correct if we interpret ‘theory’ in a narrow sense. The central hypothesis, and this is all that I shall be concerned with in this paper, is that at some point in a country’s development events may occur that will considerably speed up its rate of growth, and that when this persists for two or three decades2 the country then enters a stage of self-sustained growth. This hypothesis is worth considering on many grounds, not the least of which is that Rostow has succeeded in clothing it in a language that gives his hypothesis great suggestive and evocative power.

Keywords: Population Growth; Capita Income; Income Growth; Fertility Decline; Sustained Growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1963
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:intecp:978-1-349-00226-9_10

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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-00226-9_10

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