ABSTRACT
Over the past three decades there has been a significant change in emphasis in the debate on the relationship between population and development. Population as a resource, considered both quantitatively and qualitatively, is now less commonly regarded as the major problem in development thinking. In particular, the ‘population problem’, raising a neo-Malthusian spectre, no longer haunts every discussion. It has also come to be recognised that population is not so much the problem as the purpose of development. Development, however defined, is aimed ultimately at ‘improving’ people’s lives in one way or another. There is also a perceptible shift in the balance between the large-scale, broad generalisations and the small-scale, local context of much of the current work in development studies (Corbridge 1995: 174); it is around individuals, households and small groups that much of the current debate is focused. This is especially logical in developing countries, where the extended family household is very important as the practical unit (Potter et al. 1999: 122). Nevertheless, just as there are many different perspectives on development, so there are wide differences of opinion about the role of population in development, and the following account attempts to identify the most important of these.
