I think your confusion with the genetics papers is because they are talking about _effective_ population size (N~e~), which is not at all close to ‘total population size’. Effective population size is a highly technical genetic statistic which has little to do with total population size except under conditions which definitely do not obtain for humans. It’s vastly smaller for humans (such as 10^4) because populations have expanded so much, there are various demographic bottlenecks, and reproductive patterns have changed a great deal. It’s entirely possible for effective population size to drop drastically even as the total population is growing rapidly. (For example, if one tribe with new technology genocided a distant tribe and replaced it; the total population might be growing rapidly due to the new tribe’s superior agriculture, but the effective population size would have just shrunk drastically as a lot of genetic diversity gets wiped out. Ancient DNA studies indicate there has been an awful lot of population replacements going on during human history, and this is why effective population size has dropped so much.) I don’t think you can get anything useful out of effective population size numbers for economics purposes without making so many assumptions and simplifications as to render the estimates far more misleading than whatever direct estimates you’re trying to correct; they just measure something irrelevant but misleadingly similar sounding to what you want.
I’d hoped that effective population size growth rates might be at-least-not-completely-terrible proxies for absolute population size growth rates. If I remember correctly, some of these papers do present their results as suggesting changes in absolute population size, but I think you’re most likely right: the relevant datasets probably can’t give us meaningful insight into absolute population growth trends.
I think your confusion with the genetics papers is because they are talking about _effective_ population size (N~e~), which is not at all close to ‘total population size’. Effective population size is a highly technical genetic statistic which has little to do with total population size except under conditions which definitely do not obtain for humans. It’s vastly smaller for humans (such as 10^4) because populations have expanded so much, there are various demographic bottlenecks, and reproductive patterns have changed a great deal. It’s entirely possible for effective population size to drop drastically even as the total population is growing rapidly. (For example, if one tribe with new technology genocided a distant tribe and replaced it; the total population might be growing rapidly due to the new tribe’s superior agriculture, but the effective population size would have just shrunk drastically as a lot of genetic diversity gets wiped out. Ancient DNA studies indicate there has been an awful lot of population replacements going on during human history, and this is why effective population size has dropped so much.) I don’t think you can get anything useful out of effective population size numbers for economics purposes without making so many assumptions and simplifications as to render the estimates far more misleading than whatever direct estimates you’re trying to correct; they just measure something irrelevant but misleadingly similar sounding to what you want.
Thanks for the clarifying comment!
I’d hoped that effective population size growth rates might be at-least-not-completely-terrible proxies for absolute population size growth rates. If I remember correctly, some of these papers do present their results as suggesting changes in absolute population size, but I think you’re most likely right: the relevant datasets probably can’t give us meaningful insight into absolute population growth trends.