Population Growth and Economic Growth in Africa

Abstract

There is a lack of consensus on the impact that population growth has on economic growth, even though this issue continues to be of utmost importance for policymaking, particularly in developing economies. This paper examines the causality between population growth and economic growth in Africa, using Johansen and Granger-causality models. Our results show that the variables are cointegrated, implying the existence of a long run relationship in Nigeria but not in Cote d’Ivoire. We also found a negative, long run causal relationship between the two variables in Nigeria: population growth negatively affects economic growth in the long term. In Cote d’Ivoire, our results show that population growth causes economic growth in the short run.