Should Population Projections Consider "Limiting Factors"--and If So, How?

Abstract

Population questions have dimensions scales and purposes. It is noted that whether and how population projections should consider limiting factors depend on the dimensions scales and purposes of the projections. In addition to demographic and social aspects dimensions of population questions include economics the environment and the culture. Possible constraints of food and water are likely to be mediated through economic and political systems; hence they should be taken into account in future population projections by means of models that explicitly represent economic and behavioral cultural and political responses. Such models and the projections they yield depend on the continuation in the future of specified relationships among model variables. Presented in this paper are discussions on the recall to some early theory of limiting factors in relation to human population. A review of a few concrete examples of population projections that argue in favor of considering limiting factors is also included. Furthermore arguments are presented against considering limiting factors and practical suggestions are made that are differentiated by the dimensions scales and purposes of population projections.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 14 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.