Bell Curve globalized?

[Fellows, Jeffrey]

It is my recollection (from graduate school development studies) that poor
people have many children in order to have more hands to do the family's
labor and to secure their old age (as Wojtek mentioned), since poverty in
developing nations is associated with high infact and child mortality rates.
Increasing incomes among poor folks lower the infant and child mortality
rates, which raises the population growth rate. The not as poor folks
responded by not having as many children (no need for replacement). Later
on, if the income levels remained there was more of a chance that education
would be provided, but this seemed to be related to the past growth in
income, not the past decision (need) to have fewer children. Also, it is my
recollection that the economic development (in whatever shape) that was
responsible for the widespread growth in incomes also was the source of
improved schools, changes in the need for educated labor (and hence the
opportunities children and their parents would have before them). The
neoclassical stuff seemed to (a) not stay around long enough after the
initial population growth to witness the birth rate decline, and (b) forgot
to mention that increasing educational attainment would not have been
possible without larger structural changes that made education a better deal
than before. 

Jeff


> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Wojtek Sokolowski [SMTP:sokol at jhu.edu]
> Sent:	Friday, May 28, 1999 5:11 PM
> To:	lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject:	Re: Bell Curve globalized?
> 
> At 12:59 PM 5/28/99 -0700, Michael Perelman wrote:
> >No.  Better off families have fewer children.
> 
> 
> That puts the horse before the cart, Michael.  Poor people have more
> children, because children is their insurance policy against poverty, old
> age etc.  So the proper counterfactual to poor having many children is not
> well off having fewer children - but poor having fewer children.  With
> fewer or no children, the poor's economic condition would be even worse.
> 
> For example, the urban anthropologist patricia fernandez kelly found that
> teenage pregnancy in inner cities is often not a result of "irrational
> behavior" (i.e. teens not knowing how to prevent unwanted pregnancies) but
> a conscious decision to gain social status (mother having higher status
> than single women).
> 
> methinks, the causal connection between number of children and poverty is
> typical example of neo-classical mythology that put causality on its head.
> While economic well-being has a negative effect on the number of children,
> it doe not follow that the number of children has an effect on your
> socio-economic status.  It is like saying: "wealthy people tend to go to
> the opera more often than poor people; so I better start going to the
> opera
> to increase my chances of becoming rich."
> 
> wojtek
>