One reason people make this claim is that many models of economic growth depend on population growth. Like you noted, there are lots of other ways to grow the economy by making each individual more productive (lower poverty, more education, automating tasks, more focus on research, etc.).
But crucially, all of these measures have diminishing returns. Let’s say that in the future everyone on earth has a PhD, is highly productive, and works in an important research field. In this case the only way to continue growing economy is through population growth, since everything else has already been maxed out. This is why Chad Jones claims that the long run growth rate limits to the population growth rate:
At least that’s what the models say. Jones himself admits that AI might change these dynamics (I guess population growth of AI’s would become the thing that matters more if they replace human labor?).
Definitely agree with him that it can’t go on forever:
“Many of the sources of growth historically — including rising educational attainment, rising research intensity, and declining misallocation — are inherently limited and cannot go on forever.”
Also agree when he says:
“We are a long way from hitting any constraint that we have run out of people to hunt for new ideas”
We’re way off everyone having PhDs. I’ll hold off worrying about declining birth rates for a few decades.
One reason people make this claim is that many models of economic growth depend on population growth. Like you noted, there are lots of other ways to grow the economy by making each individual more productive (lower poverty, more education, automating tasks, more focus on research, etc.).
But crucially, all of these measures have diminishing returns. Let’s say that in the future everyone on earth has a PhD, is highly productive, and works in an important research field. In this case the only way to continue growing economy is through population growth, since everything else has already been maxed out. This is why Chad Jones claims that the long run growth rate limits to the population growth rate:
https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/annualreview.pdf
At least that’s what the models say. Jones himself admits that AI might change these dynamics (I guess population growth of AI’s would become the thing that matters more if they replace human labor?).
Thanks for sharing this.
Definitely agree with him that it can’t go on forever:
“Many of the sources of growth historically — including rising educational attainment, rising research intensity, and declining misallocation — are inherently limited and cannot go on forever.”
Also agree when he says:
“We are a long way from hitting any constraint that we have run out of people to hunt for new ideas”
We’re way off everyone having PhDs. I’ll hold off worrying about declining birth rates for a few decades.