Some Economic Consequences of a Declining Population

Abstract

This chapter provides a few very rough figures to illustrate the order of magnitude of the different factors involved. It distinguishes the inventions which enable a unit of capital to yield a unit of product with the aid of less labour than before. The chapter also argues that a phase of declining population will make it immensely more difficult than before to maintain prosperity. It argues that people shall be absolutely dependent for the maintenance of prosperity and civil peace on policies of increasing consumption by a more equal distribution of incomes and of forcing down the rate of interest. Unquestionably a stationary population does facilitate a rising standard of life; but on one condition only - that the increase in consumption, as the case may be, which the stationariness of population makes possible, does actually take place.

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