Dr. Rahul Gupta Choudhury
Many articles have been written on the characteristics of the development of the advanced countries. There seems to be a consensus on how urbanization is closely linked to GDP per capita of a region or country – across the world. This research study wants to find out if that is the case and how different regions and countries across the world are performing on the crucial parameters of population, urbanization, and GDP per capita. While ‘’demographic dividend’’ is a boon for the country, excess population pressure may have negative impacts on an area as it increases the demands on resources like agricultural land as well as other resources like energy, food, water, and other services like infrastructure etc. So, eleven regions of the world were considered on the basis of classification done by the World Bank. Data was collated for a period of sixty years – from 1960 to 2020. Analysis was done on the parameters of population and population growth percentages, urbanizations and its growth percentages, and GDP per capita and its growth percentages. The study gives a panoramic view of the growth of all the eleven regions and also establishes that there is indeed a high correlation between urbanization and GDP per capita. East Asia + Pacific has performed the best in terms of all the parameters – however, they also have to go a long way to catch up with the advanced economies as the advanced economies already had a head start in the 1960s.
