Optimal Population and Exhaustible Resource Constraints

Area of Science:

• Environmental economics
• Population dynamics
• Welfare economics

Background:

• Extensive research explores optimal human population size, balancing individual utility against societal costs.
• A key factor is the social weight assigned to population size, typically leading to larger populations with higher weights.
• Exhaustible resource constraints have not been fully integrated into these population models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how exhaustible resource constraints alter the relationship between social welfare weights and optimal population size.
• To determine if a higher social welfare weight can lead to a smaller optimal population under resource scarcity.
• To apply these findings to population policy, particularly in the context of climate change.

Main Methods:

• Economic modeling incorporating an exhaustible resource constraint.
• Analysis of optimal population levels under varying discount rates and social welfare weights.
• Numerical simulations applied to climate change scenarios.

Main Results:

• The standard result that higher social welfare weights lead to larger populations is conditionally overturned by resource constraints.
• When the discount rate is sufficiently low, optimal population size decreases as the social welfare weight increases.
• This suggests total-utilitarian planners might favor smaller populations than average-utilitarian planners.

Conclusions:

• Resource constraints fundamentally change optimal population dynamics, challenging previous assumptions.
• Population policy, especially concerning climate change, must account for the interaction between resource limits and social welfare valuation.
• The findings have significant implications for long-term sustainability and intergenerational equity.