An investigation of the relationship between population growth and human development in Lebanon

Abstract

The study of the relationship between population growth and human development in Lebanon for the period between 1990 and 1997, is divided into two major parts. First, I studied the relationship between population growth and each of the four components of HDI; education, health, revenue, and freedom. The analysis showed that the relationship between population growth and education; mainly adult literacy and school enrollment, for the sample data under study remains inconclusive. According to health; calculated as the average between crude birth rate, infant mortality rate, and crude death rate, the analysis proved that the regression model is significant and the regression line explains a good deal of the variation in the population sample. As to revenue, reflected by GDP at constant prices of 1992 US $, the regression line could not be produced because the sample data points are scattered around a curve. Unfortunately, the study of the relationship with respect to freedom was not achieved since it is more efficacious for freedom to be discussed qualitatively than quantitatively. Furthermore, I studied the relationship between population growth and the Human Development Index (HDI) components simultaneously. Although some of the HDI components taken in this research were significant and others were not, the multiple regression analysis revealed that the regression model is insignificant. Second, I examined the relationship between population growth and HDI as calculated by the UNDP in the HDR for Lebanon, Syria, and Israel respectively. The regression analysis yielded no significance for Lebanon. Whereas, the regression analysis between population growth and HDI; proved to be significant for Syria and Israel simultaneously. Moreover, the coefficient of determination for Syria is higher than that for Israel which concludes that the regression equation is more useful in making predictions in Syria than in Israel. The method used; in general, in achieving the results is statistical. Specifically, with the help of a statistical package named SPSS I was able to conduct a linear regression analysis to investigate on the causality between population growth and human development for the two objectives taken in this paper.