Demographic questions have provoked such interest in recent decades that the international community has held decennial conferences on the subject since 1974. Several scholars, of whom Malthus is the most renown, hold the idea that a large, rapidly growing population is a factor associated with poverty. The difficult socioeconomic conditions in southern, developing countries together with their rapid population growth rates would seem to lend credibility to Malthusianism. It is important to know to what extent in developing countries populations can contribute to development. Thus, other authors, including J.C. Chesnais and E. Boserup, argue that it is often under challenging situations and constraints that societies are driven to conceive alternate strategies to improve their quality of life. Populations are essentially forced to draw upon their creative powers in order to employ thus far underexploited, latent resources. The existence of a large market facilitates the growth of economies of scale at the population level, stimulates innovation, and therefore enables the growth of exchange and profit. The situation in Senegal is discussed as an example of a country constrained to continually do more to meet the health, education, nutrition, and labor needs of a large, young, and ever-growing population. Solutions to population problems in developing countries cannot be found in isolation. There is no substitute for socioeconomic development.