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The Director of the Regional Institute of Population Studies (RIPS) of the University of Ghana, Professor Samuel Nii Ardey Codjoe says Ghana is unlikely to attain the 3,000 dollars per capital income by 2020 as espoused in the Ghana Shared and Growth Development agenda. He said for the economy to be sustainable, the economic growth rate should be three times higher than the population growth. Prof. Codjoe explained that the current economic growth hovering around five per cent and population growth ranging between 2.5 and 2.6 per cent, it was only likely that the desire to attain the 3,000 dollars per capital income could be realized in 2040. The RIPS Director was presenting a paper on �Population growth and economic growth dimensions of the current challenges� at the national conference on bridging the gap between education/ training and industry in Accra yesterday. He projected that Ghana�s per capital income would hover around 1, 5000 dollars in the year 2020. Ghana�s per capital income, which is obtained by dividing the country�s GDP, adjusted by inflation, by the total population, and was estimated at 724.54 dollars in 2012. Prof. Codjoe stressed on the linkages between economic growth and population increase for a balanced and sustainable development, adding that �population is the main actor, if you ignore it, I am afraid you will run into problems.� He said the � living from hand to mouth in the Ghanaian parlance� was giving way to what people now refer to as �living from hand to the throat� because it no more reaching their mouth anymore. He said Ghana had a youthful population pyramid, typical of a developing country, with a high dependency rate on the working population which was not conducive for sustainable economic development. Prof. Codjoe said child, labour and youth unemployment were some of the effects of Ghana�s youthful and dependency population structure adding. �These issues have to be dealt with once and for all.� He explained that the youthful, population of the country could either be used positively by harnessing their potential for socio-economic development or cold be of a problem if not managed well. The RIPS director said �Unlike in the UK which has an ideal population structure with one or two people taking care of one person, the reverse is the case in Ghana with a population structure that has many young people at the base, and one person working to take care of about five people.� Prof. Cudjoe said with such a population the working group was not able to earn enough to meet their commitments and save for resource mobilization necessary for investment. He cited the example of South Korea that had been able to reverse its population pyramid to a desirable structure between 1965 and 1995 to improve on its economy, stressing that there was the need to boost economic growth while stabilizing the population. Prof. Cudjoe explained that by effectively repositioning family planning to increase national ownership of family planning programme in the country, �the population will slow down� for the young people to move into the working class to work and save for investment. He said if nothing was done to balance economic growth with population increase now for sustainable development, the country would be overwhelmed in the future as the population would double in 28 years.