Nevertheless, the question remained somewhere in the back of my consciousness and today, some ten plus years on (I would rather not divulge my exact age) I have the opportunity to revisit the dilemma of my question.

I have found that there are two schools of thought in explaining the poverty and population growth phenomenon. Those who think population growth causes poverty advocate programs in family planning and education for example. Those who think poverty causes population growth favour direct economic aid, increased employment, capital investment etc. Both list a multitude of reasons for each argument, some which I consider are country or region specific such as religion. Thus I have highlighted a few common key factors, based on external research as well as personal experience from my days in India and the Philippines.

Extreme poverty and rapid population growth is most apparent in countries characterised by hunger, high fertility rates, high mortality rates, where citizens have limited access to adequate land, employment opportunities, education, health care, old age security and in some cases opportunities for women to work outside of home. Typically, the poorest are marginalised from society and have little representation or voice in public, making it even harder to escape poverty.

Poverty causes population growth (INDIA)

Without resources to secure their future, poor parents have many children as a security measure in the race for survival. High birth rates reflect people’s defensive reaction to poverty. Children can provide labour to supplement family income and for those parents who think that perhaps, one of their children might be the ‘lucky’ one to be educated and/or find a decent job in the city, that child’s income in most cases would provide for the entire family.

Bigger families can also carry more weight in the community affairs. Impoverished parents know that without children, there would be no one to care for them when they reach old age. Problems with hunger, malnutrition and disease typically afflict the poorest in a society. With limited access to basic health care, many children do not live to adulthood.  The World Health Organisation (WHO) has shown that both the actual death and the fear of death of a child will increase the fertility of a couple, regardless of family income or family size (Murdoch, Poverty of Nations, 45.)

Population growth causes concern if resources are not available to cope with the additional people requiring public services, employment, housing and so on. Links between rapid population growth and poverty have been established in countries such as the Philippines where the budget is already stretched and where poverty is already high. Rapid population growth hinders development for two interrelated reasons. First, it reduces income per capita growth and thus savings, productive capacity and economic growth. Second, as population growth outpaces the capacity of industry to absorb new labour, urban employment and rural underemployment are compounded.

Some studies have shown that the larger the family size, the more likely it is to be poor. Research (Orbeta 2002) has shown that high fertility is associated with decreasing investments in human capital (health and education). Children in large families do not perform as well in school (if attending), have poorer health, lower survival probabilities, and are less developed physically. The problem is one of resource dilution, where each additional child means a smaller share of family resources.