In the final state, i.e. after the demographic transition, most children survive, but the fertility rate is low, or below replacement, such as in predominantly Catholic Ireland or Italy today. In the intervening period population can grow rapidly, as an increasing number of infants and children survive, due to improved health services, and sufficient food and other resources, perhaps with changes in reproductive behaviour, such as a reduction in child spacing, perhaps in turn motivated by the expectation of greater prosperity. If this period of demographic transition is prolonged, and if the population growth rate is very high, then development indicators per person can falter, or even go backwards, generating a lagged risk of war, famine, mass migration or collapse. This might sound theoretical or even alarmist, and good data to test this are hard to find, but there are many recent examples: Yemen, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, NE Nigeria and, now, South Sudan. Other parts of the Sahel are also at risk, as the OASIS Initiative from the University of California Berkeley shows.
OxFam and high population growth
O'Grady's visit to South Sudan was sponsored by OxFam, and an OxFam moderator contends, in a blog published in 2014, concerning the (then) looming famine in South Sudan, that "high population growth is caused by poverty, not the other way around. The true cause of poverty is inequality — economic, political, social, as well as in terms of and civil rights, access to education and health care."
It is not just the reduced fertility rate and a more favourable dependency ratio (ie a small percentage of the population being children or elderly) which contributes to this potential for economic takeoff, but greater education too. Improved tolerance of others is much more difficult to foster, but easier (at least in culturally homogenous populations) if population growth is slow or negative - though not always; for example Japan and Russia remain intolerant of outsiders, despite having negative population growth.
The complicity of Western academics and NGOs
Let me be as frank and clear as I can be. In 1989 I co-founded two NGOs, which have worked, in Asia, attempting to change human behaviour in ways that will enhance human well-being. We have had some success, but it is very difficult. We have not worked to deliberately reduce patriarchy, nor to promote family planning; though we have worked with partners who value female education and we have deliberately avoided working with partners who are patriarchal.
I can well imagine that criticising patriarchy in South Sudan, promoting family planning, or even promoting education for girls would be difficult, and possibly dangerous. My criticism is not aimed at people living in South Sudan, at NGOs working in South Sudan (including OxFam) or even policy makers in South Sudan (or other developing countries).
My criticism is instead aimed at the disciplines of demography and economics, whose practitioners sit safely in developed countries, and who, in the main, have downplayed or ignored the concept of "human carrying capacity" and "limits to growth". (I, with Club of Rome Fellow, Dr Kerryn Higgs, author of Collision Course, Endless Growth on a Finite Planet, have an 8,000 word chapter under review called "Health, population, limits and the decline of nature" which discusses this in much more detail. I may post an extract.)
South Sudan, like Yemen, Syria, NE Nigeria and many other places, illustrates the exceedance of human carrying capacity. High population growth is not the only factor, and it is hard to fix, but the head in the sand attitude towards these issues by most academics, most religious leaders, most politicians and most of the world's media does not help.
It is good for the media to describe these tragedies, to provide some disquiet and awareness to our comfortable, possibly complacent, lives, but it would be even better if the media and academics could explore the deeper causes of these tragedies. That might reduce the chance of additional or even worse catastrophes in future.