The 1999 Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics, the eleventh anniversary, was held at the Bank on April 28-30, 1999. The discussions focused on three trends of development: 1) the emerging international financial architecture; 2) challenges to social development; and 3) lessons from a decade of transition. Twelve papers were presented on a variety of topics including corporate governance, short-term capital flows, and the relationships between crime, violence, and inequitable development. The keynote addresses by Noble Laureate Kenneth Arrow, Secretary of the US Treasury Lawrence Summers, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, senior vice president, Development Economics and chief economist at the World Bank and former chair of the US Council of Economic Advisors, broach many of the topics that were central to the conference. They examine technological knowledge and innovation and global integration and look back at the arduous process of transition in the former Soviet Union.

Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 1997

This study is concerned with the relationships among population growth poverty and environmental degradation with particular focus on the situation in developing countries. The author rejects the concept of a general theory of fertility behavior in favor of an interpretation of these relationships which might be applicable to certain situations in the poorest parts of the Indian subcontinent and Sub-Saharan Africa; such situations include unacceptable risks of maternal death for poor illiterate women and a condemnation to extreme poverty in conditions of the deterioration of local resources and of the environment. The author concludes that population growth rates are too high in certain specific areas and that an appropriate policy reaction to such conditions would be to try to change the options that men and women face so that their reasoned choice would be to lower their fertility.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2729316.pdf

The population problem: theory and evidence.

A short answer is, not very. In contrast to economic growth, where the free market is commonly viewed as a prime mover, mortality in the last two centuries has not been greatly helped by market forces. The classic sources of market failure – information failures, externalities, public goods, principal-agent, and free rider problems – have been pervasive. Nor has economic growth itself been behind the worldwide improvement in life expectancy. In the primitive state of nineteenth century health knowledge, the immense rise in urbanisation engendered by economic growth largely vitiated any positive level-of-living effects by increasing exposure to disease. Instead, public policy initiatives, based on new knowledge of disease and new institutions, have been essential to the improvement of life expectancy, both in urban areas and nationwide. Sweepings from butchers' stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud, Dead cats, and turnip tops, come tumbling down the flood. – Jonathan Swift, A Description of a City Shower , 1710

How beneficent is the market? A look at the modern history of mortality.

STATE EDUCATIONAL POLICIES are a critical aspect of the economics of family building in all societies, as well as a primary means of socialization by the state. Caldwell (1980) hypothesized that the onset of the fertility transition in developing countries would be linked with the achievement of “mass formal schooling,” by which he meant near-universal enrollment of children in primary or basic schooling. In sub-Saharan Africa, a region in which the fertility transition has begun in some countries but not in others, this hypothesis remains untested. In all of these countries, formal schooling is a foreign import, imposed in a variety of ways over the last century by colonial regimes and foreign churches. In more recent years, as former colonies have gained their independence, most governments have made significant budgetary commitments to education, and educational systems have been revised and reformed to serve the goals of independent states. Today, the educational systems arrayed across the African continent show enormous variation, with many retaining strong links to their colonial roots. Some countries have achieved near-universal enrollment at the primary-school level, but most have not. In many, gender gaps in enrollment rates are closing but, in others, this gap remains large despite significant progress. Two decades have passed since the publication of Caldwell’s (1980) article on “Mass education as a determinant of the timing of fertility decline.” The links he hypothesized between mass schooling and fertility were based largely on the historical experience of the West, where state enforcement of compulsory schooling laws was the rule. In that article, he faulted much of the literature on education and fertility in developing countries for having neglected the more immediate impact of children’s schooling on the

/pdf/the-spread-of-primary-schooling-in-sub-saharan-africa-2bownzlrck.pdf

The spread of primary schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa: implications for fertility change.

POPULATION GROWTH ELICITS widely different responses from various observers. Some believe it to be among the causes of the most urgent problems facing humankind today (e.g., Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1990), while others permute the elements of this causal chain, arguing, for example, that contemporary poverty and illiteracy in poor countries are the causes, rather than the consequences, of rapid population growth.' Still others claim that even in the poorest countries population growth can be expected to provide a spur to economic progress.2 Among the many who remain, there is a wide spectrum of views, both on the determinants of population growth and on the effects of that growth on the natural-resource base and human welfare. It would seem not only that our attitudes toward population size and its growth differ, but that there is no settled view on how the matter should be studied. As with religion and politics, many people have opinions on population that they cling to with tenacity. In this article I bring together theoretical and empirical findings to argue that such divergence of opinion is unwarranted. In the first two sections I offer the conjecture that differences persist because the interface of population, resources, and welfare at a spatially localized level has been a relatively neglected subject. Neglect by experts is probably also the reason why the nexus has attracted much popular discourse, which, while often illuminating, is frequently descriptive rather than analytical. It is not uncommon among those who write about population, resources, and welfare to adopt a global, future-oriented view: the emphasis frequently is on the deleterious effects a large and increasingly affluent population would have on Earth in the future.3 This slant has been instructive, but it has drawn attention away from the economic misery and ecological degradation endemic in large parts of the world today. Disaster is not something for which the poorest have to wait; it is a frequent occurrence. Moreover, among the rural poor in developing countries, decisions on fertility,

Population and Resources: An Exploration of Reproductive and Environmental Externalities

Within the past 2 centuries practically every region in Europe has experienced substantial reduction in mortality and reduction in fertility of at least 50%. The remaining exception are Ireland some provinces in Spain and Portugal Albania and a few areas in Yugoslavia. The fertility decline occurred at different times and under different circumstances in each country. The 4 interrelated measures of fertility used in this research are explained and illustrated. Fertility at the start of this period was lower in most of Europe than i n the rest of the world due to abstinence from marriage. It was hypothesized by the researchers that birth control would first be used among high parity and older women in the population. Maps and charts are employed which illustrate marital and fertility trends in all the countries of Europe. Results of the study show that the decline began in France before the end of the eighteenth century. There are less diff erences between Eastern and Western European trends than expected. The proportion of married among the national populations began to rise in 1930 and continued to 1960. This coincides with the increasing ability of couples to control fertility are presented. It is shown that the process was more complex and diverse than expected.

Szramkiewicz R

Papers

The decline of fertility in Europe from the French Revolution to World War II.