More aid plus more people does not equal less poverty

Roger Martin, Population Matters
You Wu, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

In the 20 highest fertility countries with the fastest growing populations, an escalating amount of development aid has been invested in the past three decades, to reduce poverty and improve living standards. However, the number of people in absolute poverty has actually increased. Rapid population growth is the main cause – diluting GDP growth often to the elimination of growth in GDP per capita, and exacerbating inequality of income distribution. Three sectors of aid contributed to fertility reduction: family planning, education and economic infrastructure. The study found that these received only 16.38% of total aid; and the key sector, family planning, received only 0.31%. Fertility reduction is an essential condition for reducing poverty. In its absence, other aid programmes have failed in this aim, and thus been at least partly wasted. This result supports a growing body of research which highlights the extent to which population growth rate itself impedes development.