Village and Household Economies in India's Semi-Arid Tropics

This paper examines ideas about possible ways in which the extent of women's autonomy, women's economic dependency, and other aspects of their position vis-a-vis men influence fertility in Third World populations. Women's position or “status” seems likely to be related to the supply of children because of its links with age at marriage. Women's position may also affect the demand for children and the costs of fertility regulation, though some connections suggested in the literature are implausible. The paper ends with suggestions for future research.

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The impact of women's social position on fertility in developing countries

Clearer understanding of the impact of gender on reproductive decision making is important for the formulation of family planning policy in developing countries. In general gender differences in fertilty goals are most likely to be found in highly patriarchal low-income high-fertility lineage-dominated societies in which formal schooling is relatively uncommon. It is unclear however whether men or women are likely to be more pronatalist in such settings. The physical costs to women of bearing children their responsibility for the day-to-day care of children and mens control over most of the resources could result in higher family size desires on the part of men in patriarchal societies. On the other hand womens economic vulnerability in these societies and the dominance of the maternal role could make women more favorable to higher fertility than men. Under relatively modern gender-equal conditions there is most likely to be a similarity of mens and womens fertility goals. A review of available empirical research on gender factors suggests 4 generalizations: 1) there is considerable variation in the relative fertility goals of the sexes across countries and studies; 2) the area of greatest gender asymmetry is the extent to which sons are preferred over daughters; 3) mens tendency to strongly prefer sons may account for their weak tendency to desire additional children more than women do; and 4) more often than not mens and womens fertility goals are the same.

Differences between Women's and Men's Reproductive Goals in Developing Countries

This article compares the declines in fertility in Europe and the Third World. Lower levels of fertility were largely due to the adoption of innovative behavior within marriage. So far this transformation of reproduction has been monotonic and rapid. Socioeconomic development is associated with the timing of the onset of the transition and is responsible for differences among groups during the transition, although it is not yet possible to rule out alternative explanations such as ideational or institutional change. The pace and pervasiveness of the declines, however, suggest that a mechanism of diffusion is involved.

The fertility transition: Europe and the Third World compared.

This paper argues that fertility transition in contemporary societies occurs when changes in the labor market and the opportunity structure produce a situation in which personal material well-being is determined more by formal education and skill training than personal relationships. These changes have the effect of sharply limiting or eliminating the expected intergenerational income flows from or through children leading to limitations on family size. This modification and extension of Caldwells wealth flows model facilitates an analysis of historical regional and social class-specific differences in the onset and pace of the demographic transition and points to new macro-level socioeconomic indicators. Claims of a modified wealth flow theory are supported by data from the Caribbean where there have been significant changes in the moral economy of childbearing and family relationships. The authors modifications to wealth flow theory incorporate several new macro-level indicators: change in opportunity structure between time t-n and time t (defined as the percent of the labor force engaged in agriculture around 1980) the ability to use formal schooling to create and/or maintain acceptable material standards of living (defined as the product of the percentage change of proportion of the labor force in agriculture in 1960-80 and secondary school enrollment as a percent of age group) and a culturally relevant starting point (defined as the product of the crude birth rate in 1960 and the natural logarithm of the 1960 infant mortality rate). Future research needs to specify more rigorously the model using measures of real wage rates and agricultural mechanization as well as nonagricultural employment. Also needed specification is a model for fertility at the micro-level that includes an explicit linkage with macro-level variables. Such analyses may resolve puzzling discrepancies between fertility trends and trends in education infant mortality and family planning encountered by studies focused on aggregated data.

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1983.85.1.02a00010

The Modern Demographic Transition: An Analysis of Subsistence Choices and Reproductive Consequences

Manupur, one of the more than a half-million villages of India, has acquired a special place in the field of population. Mahmood Mamdani's 1972 book, The Myth of Population Control, ' based on a microdemographic study of this village in the early 1970s, has had a strong influence on thinking about population policy in India as well as internationally. It expressed forcefully the fashionable view of the early 1 970s that family planning programs are of little use to the villagers of developing countries. Mamdani interviewed Manupur men of all castes and occupational classes and quotes their views copiously in the book. All, rich and poor, landholder and landless alike, conveyed the same message: because children, particularly sons, are economically valuable as a source of household and paid labor, as insurance against various risks and old-age disability, and as providers of remittances from outside the village, Manupur villagers want as many children as possible, and, hence, family planning does not make sense to them. Using data collected in 1982 from the same village, this paper shows that the family planning attitudes and behavior of villagers are now significantly different from those documented by Mamdani, and seeks to relate these differences to socioeconomic changes that have occurred in the village. Manupur is located in Punjab, which was the pioneer and most successful among Indian states in implementing the agricultural technology of the green revolution. At the time of Mamdani's investigation, Manupur farmers, all of whom are Jat by caste,2 were already benefiting from improved varieties of wheat and mechanization of some agricultural activities. Mamdani found, however, that benefits actually increased the demand for agricultural laborand, consequently, the labor value of children-among both landholders and landless laborers. He also cited examples to show that introduction of new technology-for example, the sewing machine-deprived many artisans of

Neeraj Kak

Papers

Demographic transition in a Punjab village.