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    6.4 The Causes of High Fertility in Developing Countries: The Malthusian and Household Models

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    Vathana Sor
    The document discusses two models of high fertility in developing countries: [1] The Malthusian model argues that population growth will outpace food supply growth, leading to poverty. However, it ignores technological progress and does not match empirical evidence. [2] The household model views children as costs and benefits, with high fertility in poor countries partly due to seeing children as future economic support. Specific factors like increasing women's education and employment, rising incomes, and social security programs are implicated in reducing birth rates among the poor. The document also notes population growth can intensify problems like limiting economic growth, increasing poverty, and harming education, health, food, environment and migration.

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    6.4 The Causes of High Fertility in Developing Countries: The Malthusian and Household Models

    Uploaded by

    Vathana Sor
    156 views8 pages
    The document discusses two models of high fertility in developing countries: [1] The Malthusian model argues that population growth will outpace food supply growth, leading to poverty. However, it ignores technological progress and does not match empirical evidence. [2] The household model views children as costs and benefits, with high fertility in poor countries partly due to seeing children as future economic support. Specific factors like increasing women's education and employment, rising incomes, and social security programs are implicated in reducing birth rates among the poor. The document also notes population growth can intensify problems like limiting economic growth, increasing poverty, and harming education, health, food, environment and migration.

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    David Part ECO

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    The document discusses two models of high fertility in developing countries: [1] The Malthusian model argues that population growth will outpace food supply growth, leading to poverty. However, it ignores technological progress and does not match empirical evidence. [2] The household model views children as costs and benefits, with high fertility in poor countries partly due to seeing children as future economic support. Specific factors like increasing women's education and employment, rising incomes, and social security programs are implicated in reducing birth rates among the poor. The document also notes population growth can intensify problems like limiting economic growth, increasing poverty, and harming education, health, food, environment and migration.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    156 views8 pages

    6.4 The Causes of High Fertility in Developing Countries: The Malthusian and Household Models

    Uploaded by

    Vathana Sor
    The document discusses two models of high fertility in developing countries: [1] The Malthusian model argues that population growth will outpace food supply growth, leading to poverty. However, it ignores technological progress and does not match empirical evidence. [2] The household model views children as costs and benefits, with high fertility in poor countries partly due to seeing children as future economic support. Specific factors like increasing women's education and employment, rising incomes, and social security programs are implicated in reducing birth rates among the poor. The document also notes population growth can intensify problems like limiting economic growth, increasing poverty, and harming education, health, food, environment and migration.

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    6.

    4 The Causes of High Fertility in Developing


    Countries: The Malthusian and Household Models

     The Malthusian Population Trap (Thomas Malthus)


    • It is the theory that, as population growth ahead of agriculture
    growth, there must be a stage which the food supply is
    insufficient to feed the population. Malthus contended that the
    only way to avoid this condition of chronic low level of living
    or absolute poverty was for people to enlarge in “moral
    restraint” and limit the number of their progeny. Modern
    economists have given name to the Malthusian’s idea as the
    low-level equilibrium population trap or more simply the
    Malthusian Population Trap.
     Criticisms of the Malthusian Model
    • We can criticize the population trap on two major grounds:
    • First, the model ignores the enormous impact of technological progress in
    offsetting the growth-inhibiting force of rapid population increases.
    • Second, focuses on the assumption that national rates of population increase are
    directly related to the level of national per capita income.
    In sum, Malthusian and neo-Malthusian theories as applied to contemporary
    developing nations have severely limited relevance for the following reasons:
    They do not take adequate account of the role and impact if technological
    progress
    They are based on a hypothesis about a macro relationship between population
    growth and level of per capita income that does not stand up to empirical testing
    of the modern period.
    They focus on wrong variable, per capita income, as the principal determinant of
    population growth rates.
     The Microeconomic Household Theory of Fertility
    • Microeconomic theory of fertility is the theory that family formation
    has costs and benefits the size of families formed. It is the way how
    people choose how many children to consume as part of utility
    maximization problem. Children in less developing countries can be
    thought as investment goods.
     The Demand of Children in developing country

    • This theory assumes that the household demand for children is


    determined by family preferences for a certain number of surviving
    children by the price or the opportunity cost of rearing these children,
    and by level of family income. Children in poor society are seen partly
    as economic investment goods in that there is an expected return both
    child labor and financial support for their old ages parents.
     Implication for Developing and Fertility
    • Specifically, birth rates among the very poor are likely to fall where
    the following socioeconomic changes come to pass:
    1. An increase in the education of women and a consequent
    improvement in their role and status
    2. An increase in female nonagricultural wage employment
    opportunities, which raises the price or cost of their traditional child-
    rearing activities
    3. A rise in family income levels through the increase direct
    employment and earnings of a husband and wife or through the
    redistribution of income and assets from rich to poor
    4. A reduction in infant mortality through expanded public health
    programs and better nutritional status for both mother and child, and
    better medical care
    5. The development of old-age and other social security system outside
    the extended family network to lessen the economic dependence of
    parents.
    6. Expanded schooling opportunities so that parents can better substitute
    child quality for large numbers of children.
    6.5 The consequences of High Fertility: Some
    Conflicting Perspectives
    • We should recognize that population growth is not the only or even the
    primary sources of low level of living, eroding self-esteem, and
    limited freedom in developing nations. On the other hand, it would be
    equally naïve to think that rapid population growth in many countries
    and region is not a serious intensifier and multiplier of those integral
    components of underdevelopment .
     Seven Negative Consequences of Population Growth

    1. Economic Growth
    2. Poverty and Inequality
    3. Education
    4. Health
    5. Food
    6. Environment
    7. International Migration

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