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This book examines how population has been discussed in economics and the social ideals behind it.
 
The primary goal is to present an overview of the debate in the field of economics surrounding population. Although previous books with similar objectives have been published, the current book discusses the role of population in economics in a diachronic fashion, taking (at least some of) the recent developments in research on individual economists into account. This book seeks to provide a historical overview of how population has been discussed in economics.
 
This involves the second of the book’s objectives, which is to recapture the position of population in economics. Above all, the idea of population involves a statistical grasp of the number of people, which entails governance as an entity that grasps the number of people and institutions as an entity that influences this. The challenge of this book is not so much how the “top down” control of a population through governance was considered, but how governance and the institutions on which a population is based were perceived. When considering the role of population in economics, attention must be paid to the question of institutions. This leads to a rethinking of the history of economics itself.
 
The third goal of this book is to rethink consideration of the place of population in the economy in modern and contemporary times. Even since the arrival of this modern era, ideas about population have changed considerably; however, on the one hand, overpopulation has been feared as having a negative economic impact, and on the other, underpopulation as portending this same effect. Thus, implicitly, if not explicitly, there is a tendency in modern times to think of an appropriate increase in population as having a positive economic impact. Therefore, governmental policies such as marriage and childrearing programs are then used to manage population growth rates. Use of birth control tends to be promoted when the population is growing excessively, while measures to promote childbirth and ease the burden of childrearing and immigration policy are introduced when it is declining. Today’s capitalist society basically respects the freedom of individuals to engage in economic activities, as well as that of marriage and of movement, but on the other hand, population is influenced by the controls posed by state policies. Rather, proper management of the rate of population growth is assumed to be a precondition for the smooth operation of the economy. Behind such management is the perception of the institutions upon which population is based. Although population is not necessarily on the chopping block when modern people discuss freedom of economic activity, it is the foundation of the economy and society. Although population is usually overshadowed in modern economics and people’s economic thinking, which primarily focuses on market mechanisms that bring about economic harmony when goods and labor are freely bought and sold in the marketplace, proper population growth still appears as important for long-term economic growth, and that population growth is influenced by institutions.
 

(Written by NOHARA Shinji, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Economics / 2023)