>From behan@osiris.Colorado.EDU Wed Jul 20 16:47:04 1994 Return-Path: behan@osiris.Colorado.EDU Received: from osiris.Colorado.EDU (osiris.Colorado.EDU [128.138.151.16]) by csf.Colorado.EDU (8.6.9/8.6.9/CNS-3.5) with ESMTP id QAA07889 for ; Wed, 20 Jul 1994 16:47:04 -0600 Received: from taweret.Colorado.EDU (taweret.Colorado.EDU [128.138.151.21]) by osiris.Colorado.EDU (8.6.9/8.6.9/CNS-3.5) with ESMTP id QAA17355 for ; Wed, 20 Jul 1994 16:47:03 -0600 Received: (behan@localhost) by taweret.Colorado.EDU (8.6.9/8.6.9/CNS-3.5) id QAA14472; Wed, 20 Jul 1994 16:47:01 -0600 Date: Wed, 20 Jul 1994 16:46:59 -0600 (MDT) From: Behan Pamela Subject: re: fertility/pop. growth To: PPN List Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Joe Heinrich raises the question of whether an alternative explanation exists for the statistical relationship between fertility and income, besides income determining fertility. He suggests that culture might present such an explanation, for instance, for Eskimo, Irish, or Cherokee families. If all we had was fertility data for the U.S., Joe's point would be hard to refute, although it doesn't explain the higher fertility of lower income white women. Ethnic minority status in the U.S. is certainly associated with lower income. However, as I understand it, lower income is associated with higher fertility internationally - in diverse cultures, heterogenous and homogenous societies, cross-nationally, etc. Some dynamic is operating here which goes beyond culture; our readings this spring suggested that poorer people need more children than wealthier people, for a number of reasons. These include help with labor intensive work such as farming, assurance that at least one child will survive to provide security for the parents in old age, status for the mother/father in societies where that is a poor woman/man's only source of status, having a large family network to use in finding work or getting help in bad times, having more family members to contribute to the pooled family income, etc. Thus, an inverse relation between income and fertility is not so easy to dismiss, or to explain away. Joe also asks for a definition of "higher status" for women, although I specifically mentioned higher education and relative autonomy in that context. Women's education is highly correlated (inversely) with fertility, as is women's employment. There are many ways to interpret and argue such a correlation, of course - I don't know how many PPN subscribers really want to pursue every alternative possibility of such facts. The Muslim husband's view of his wife's status (subjective) isn't at issue here; I'm discussing objective criteria related to women's economic and social independence. A third question raised by Joe is whether we can do anything useful with the idea that the First World has a stake in the prosperity and social equity of the Third World. I would argue that the implications of this notion are not Victorian at all (nor do they include "throwing money at them"). They suggest, instead, that the First World is not indulging in charity work when it takes an interest in Third World conditions - it is looking out for its own future. Furthermore, when the First World indulges in exploitive economic or political behavior towards the Third World, it is stabbing itself in the foot (so to speak). I repeat, what are our usual prescriptions for reducing fertility, and how would the above considerations affect them? Pamela Behan