POPULATION DYNAMICS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN MALAWI
Date
2020-09-24
Authors
KUCHANDE, STEVEN LIMBANAZO
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
UNIVERSITY OF MALAWI
Abstract
The study dwells on analysing population dynamics in relation to economic
development in Malawi. As Malawi’s population grows at 3% per year, this rapid
growth of the population has been identified as a challenge by various players in the
area of development calling for innovative ways of managing population phenomena
for sustainable development. The study’s specific objectives are threefold which are to
determine the effects of changes in Malawi’s population size, population growth, age
structure and spatial distribution on one hand on economic growth, food production and
socioeconomic development in Malawi on the other hand. The study employed
Autoregressive Distributed Lag models on time-series data spanning from 1960 to 2016
obtained from the World Bank’s World Development indicators and the Food and
Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. The study first finds that population
dynamics and economic development have a significant long run relationship in
Malawi. Specifically, the rate of population growth and the share of urban population
have a negative effect on economic development while the young and working aged
population have a positive effect. In sum, the study identifies how population dynamics
relate to economic development and thus how they can be managed to achieve
development targets both in the short term as well as in the long term. The implications
on policy are that interventions need to be made on the reduction of the rate of
population growth, investments in the current youth and working aged population’s
human capital as well as skills development and physical capital formation in rural
areas.
Description
Econometrics and Statistics