The Impact of Population Growth on the Economic Growth of Selected South Asian Countries: A Panel Cointegration Analysis

Adila Karim and Sakib Bin Amin

This study is done to assess the relationship between the population growth and economic growth. The analysis is carried out on a sample of five South Asian countries. The study investigates the impacts of population growth and the problems due to this change in population and its influence on economic growth. We take the time series data with the sample size from 1980 to 2015. In this research paper, economic growth is the dependent variable and population, urban population, fertility rate and life expectancy at birth rate are the independent variables; data collected from World Development Indicators (WDI). Unit root tests, Cointegration tests, and Granger causality tests, followed by Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) is used to examine the relation between population and per capita GDP for the selective South Asian countries. The VECM result reveal that in the long run equilibrium, the population growth and strength has no significant impact on per capita GDP. The granger causality test shows that there also exists no causality between economic growth and population growth. The research paper concludes that a long-run relation between population and real per capita GDP does not appear to exist and therefore, population growth neither causes growth of economic growth, nor is caused by it.