Abstract:
In this study, we examined the influence of population growth on the growth of two distinct economies - Nigeria and Poland. These two economies were selected due to their differences in investment in human capital development, and being at different population spectrums. While Poland with a declining population has been proactive in investing in human capita development, investment by Nigeria has been meagre despite its huge population endowment. Such has a negative consequence on the population as portrayed in her low life expectancy, literacy rate, and human capital index compared to Poland. In carrying out our empirical analysis, time series data ranging from 1991 to 2020 which were obtained from the World Bank were being put to use. The analysis follows the autoregressive distributed lag approach where we realized that there exists a long-run relationship between population growth and economic growth. Further empirical results indicated that population growth wielded a negative and significant influence on Poland's economic growth both in the short-run and in the long-run. In the case of Nigeria, population growth wielded a negative and significant short-run effect on economic growth though such effect became positive but insignificant in the long run. The policy lesson that can be derived from this is that although the two countries are at different population spectrums, the need to control population is of immense importance.
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