This article applies economic analysis to rural households in poor countries to see what one may mean by a "population problem." It is argued that there is a serious population problem in certain regions of the world, and that it is in varying degrees linked to poverty, to gender inequalities in...

This essay presents a rigorous theory of involuntary unemployment in less developed countries based on the observation that at low consumption levels a person's overall ability to work is impaired. The theory links the incidence of involuntary unemployment in a market economy to the incidence of...

This article is about the concept of optimum population and consumption. Even though it is primarily concerned with foundational issues, the various ideas that have been discussed in the literature are tested in the context of economic models with limited resources. It is argued that, broadley...

This paper is about net national product (NNP). We are concerned with what NNP means, what it should include, what it offers us and, therefore, why we may be interested in it. We show that NNP, properly defined, can be used as a gauge for project evaluation, but we also show that it should not...

This article identifies four types of social externalities associated with fertility behavior. Three are shown to be pronatalist in their effects. These three are exemplified by the way theories of economic growth treat fertility and natural resources, the way population growth and economic...

In this article, I review—and to an extent further develop—a normative theory that offers a unified language for both sustainability and policy analyses. The theory shows that by economic growth we should mean growth in wealth, which is the social worth of an economy’s entire stock of...