Limitations

The critical minimum effort thesis seems to be plausible but suffers from serious limitations from the point of view of its practical significance:

1) Dependence on foreign capital so precarious emigration may be ruled out in view of stringent immigration laws of the countries where it would be worthwhile migrating to and technological innovations cannot be made to order. In the absence of these the initial rise in income can be secured by lowering  consumption and thus increasing the rate of savings and investment.

2) The Under-developed countries lack reliable statistics on the basis of which it is possible to know the exact population , its rate of growth, the size of the capital stock, the level of income, the rates of saving and investment and the extent o which investment should increase to produce a much higher increase in income, and so on.

2) The level of investment which can have perceptible influence on population growth and produce the required increase in income is beyond the capacity of most of the under-developed countries.