World population growth has resulted from marked
reductions in mortality rates due to improved health care,
education and sanitation, especially in the developing world. For
example, a quarter of Sri Lanka's decline in mortality after 1945
has been attributed to malaria control.
Mortality rates have fallen dramatically in ssa
from just under 30 per 1000 in 1950 to some 16 per 1000 in the
early 1980s. This decline reflects the general increase in living
standards, education and public health programmemes.
While birth rates have also fallen, they remain
significantly above death rates in the developing world and only
slightly above in the developed world. It is this factor which
provides the proximate explanation for the difference between
developed and developing world experience. In the developed world,
reductions in mortality rates were generally accompanied by
reductions in birth rates. Reductions in birth rates in the
developing world have lagged behind reduced mortality rates, and in
a number of cases the birth rate has hardly fallen at all.The
reasons for the constancy in the birth rate are found in underlying
cultural attitudes to the bearing of children, and in economic
factors. As health improves, so does natural fecundity (the
physiological ability to bear children). Age at marriage for girls
in Africa has not declined significantly. There is some evidence
that breastfeeding and post-natal sexual abstinence have declined,
and there is an extremely low use rate for contraceptives. The
factors underlying these proximate reasons for the continued high
birth rate appear to be as follows:
- the
continuing agricultural bias in African economies. This provides
incentives to "invest" in children as labour on the farm: assisting
with fuelwood and water collection, caring for children, looking
after livestock, etc. Moreover, the amount of land that can be
cultivated often depends on family size, creating further
incentives for large families. The private benefits from increasing
family size thus tend to outweigh the private costs, and this
determines family size , decisions. The net private benefits will
tend to diminish, and eventually become negative above a limited
family size, as education opportunities expand, as off-farm
employment opportunities increase, and as land tenure and ownership
patterns change. State- provided education incurs private costs in
the form of uniforms, books and travel, making larger families more
costly. Urban work opportunities reduce the need for on- farm
labour, and tenurial change reduces the incentive to claim resource
and land rights on the basis of family size;
- larger
families act as a form of social security through the extended
family. Being a child frequently involves many obligations to other
members of the family. Once again, "investing in children" becomes
a way of ensuring care in old age. More generally, larger families
mean wealth and influence. As state- provided social security
systems are introduced, so this motive for larger families will
weaken;
- as long
as women have an inferior social role to men, any preferences they
might have for smaller families will be under- represented in the
private cost-benefit decision about family size. Often, however, a
woman's own status depends on childbearing, so that women appear to
share the preference for large families. As education expands and
other forms of emancipation increase, so some women might be
expected to change their preferences for large families, while
others, with a prevailing but overruled preference for smaller
families, might be expected to exert more influence;
many cultures simply favour large families. Women
are afforded