Population growth and real wages of agricultural labourers in Bangladesh

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Abstract
A long‐run negative impact of population growth upon real wages is neither theoretically self‐evident nor, in the case of rural Bangladesh, empirically clear‐cut. In addition to its negative ‘labour supply effect’, population growth may have a positive ‘labour demand effect’ upon wages. The latter may help to explain why Bangladeshi districts with higher rural population densities have higher agricultural wages, and why districts with more rapid population growth in the first half of this century subsequently experienced slower‐than‐average real wage declines. An investigation of agricultural growth and agrarian structure as mediating variables in the population‐wage relation indicates that changes in average operational holding size, inequality of landholdings, and the extent and nature of tenancy contributed to this result.

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