… is from page 8 of Julian Simon’s posthumously published 1999 volume, Hoodwinking the Nation:
Moreover, the evidence clearly indicates that population growth does not hinder economic development, and all the statistical studies show that faster population growth does not cause slower economic growth. In the 1980s there was a complete reversal of the consensus of thinking of population economists about the effects of increased population. In 1986, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences completely overturned the “official” view away from the earlier worried view expressed in 1971. It noted the absence of any statistical evidence of a negative connection between population increase and economic growth and said, “The scarcity of exhaustible resources is at most a mini restraint on economic growth.”
