ABSTRACT
The idea of population as a resource has been most closely associated in recent years with the American economist Julian Simon (Ahlburg 1998). The title of his most celebrated book, Population: The Ultimate Resource, encapsulates his argument that population growth is almost always beneficial for economic growth because population is a resource, and resources for production can be created by populations, as well as being ‘natural’. Economists traditionally identify the three factors of production: land, labour and capital. ‘Labour’ needs to include the contribution of populations to developing technologies as well as its physical labour to exploit ‘land’ and ‘capital’. As a result of the products of human ingenuity and knowledge and their application, there is consistently an increasing level of resource to facilitate production in rural and urban areas. With population growth more hands are available to produce, but more and better minds are also available to work. Like any natural resource, population as a resource needs to be managed, and it responds positively to any investment to enhance the quality of the resource. Just as irrigation will enhance the productivity of land, so education and knowledge can enhance the productivity of labour. This chapter therefore considers education and knowledge in separate sections, and how these are used to facilitate development by enhancing the human resource base in a range of contexts.
