06-18-2008, 02:25 AM
Why do poor people tend to have more kids?
Typically we hear:
1. More hands , more work. the parent can even feed of the kid like a parasite.
2. high infant mortality rate , necessitating more births in order to ensure that atleast some survive.
now, neither of these impulses are found to very economically prudent in the long run. typically the return from the "Investment", that is kids, doesn't really yield returns till the kid crosses a certain age and also after a certain age the returns kind of taper off and then start falling ( as the kid achieves independence) . thus it is only in a narrow age band that the investment may pay off and that too isn't assured, leading to abandonment etc. Moreover the recurring expenses ( food etc) have to be met as well. More 'benign" parents send the kid in the "useful" age band to work someplace for a square meal or two.
The high birth rate is of course on account of the fact that parents aren't able to gauge survival probabilities with any real degree of accuracy. this invariably leads to more kids than they had bargained for. Link this with argument no.1 and you will begin to see that from the standpoint of a poor person having more kids doesn't really pay.
On the other hand if you have less kids and plan a family. then the chances are, those kids will grow up to be healthy productive individuals ( hopefully) and may support you in your old change. Besides if you are wise you'll have enough change left over in any case to support your retirement, as it were.
Now from the point of view of society , smaller families make eminent sense. Besides the obvious fact that resources will have to be distributed among a lesser number of people , the fact is smaller families mean greater savings. As we all know savings determines investment . so this has a direct impact on growth. Of course I am assuming that your society will not turn into a high mass consumption set like the U.S and the propensity to save will very much be there. Moreover, having an undernourished work force hampers productivity considerably. In the long run growth essentially depends on augmenting productivity.
From the point of view of the ideologue , exhorting people to multiply makes eminent sense, because it would make there position even more desperate (poor people) and therefore the market for recruiting foot soldiers will be heavily skewed in the consumer's (ideologue) favour. These guys don't really send all the kids in an area to 'training camp" aka school . With "FDI" from places like Saudi Arabia , raising ( if that term can be used) a critical mass of frustrated and abused people to do your bidding becomes a cinch. Actually , I'll eat my words, the ideologues are pretty much in sync with economic realities.
Today, we often hear the term demographic dividend and simultaneously hear about the fact that the west is ageing. Now there may be an optimal population for a country , with a particular replacement ratio . However arriving at this figure needs a set of assumptions that inherently depends on the nature of the political dispensation.
Unfortunately , such an exercise has proved futile in the past and the primary reason for the failure of centrally planned economies lies in the fact that the population growth rate could not be targeted despite direct state intervention in some cases.
the number two has been arrived after carrying out a particular demographic exercise taking into account fertility rates etc. However it is somewhat arbitrary even though work has gone into determining this figure.
Regards
http://jingoworld.blogspot.com/
Typically we hear:
1. More hands , more work. the parent can even feed of the kid like a parasite.
2. high infant mortality rate , necessitating more births in order to ensure that atleast some survive.
now, neither of these impulses are found to very economically prudent in the long run. typically the return from the "Investment", that is kids, doesn't really yield returns till the kid crosses a certain age and also after a certain age the returns kind of taper off and then start falling ( as the kid achieves independence) . thus it is only in a narrow age band that the investment may pay off and that too isn't assured, leading to abandonment etc. Moreover the recurring expenses ( food etc) have to be met as well. More 'benign" parents send the kid in the "useful" age band to work someplace for a square meal or two.
The high birth rate is of course on account of the fact that parents aren't able to gauge survival probabilities with any real degree of accuracy. this invariably leads to more kids than they had bargained for. Link this with argument no.1 and you will begin to see that from the standpoint of a poor person having more kids doesn't really pay.
On the other hand if you have less kids and plan a family. then the chances are, those kids will grow up to be healthy productive individuals ( hopefully) and may support you in your old change. Besides if you are wise you'll have enough change left over in any case to support your retirement, as it were.
Now from the point of view of society , smaller families make eminent sense. Besides the obvious fact that resources will have to be distributed among a lesser number of people , the fact is smaller families mean greater savings. As we all know savings determines investment . so this has a direct impact on growth. Of course I am assuming that your society will not turn into a high mass consumption set like the U.S and the propensity to save will very much be there. Moreover, having an undernourished work force hampers productivity considerably. In the long run growth essentially depends on augmenting productivity.
From the point of view of the ideologue , exhorting people to multiply makes eminent sense, because it would make there position even more desperate (poor people) and therefore the market for recruiting foot soldiers will be heavily skewed in the consumer's (ideologue) favour. These guys don't really send all the kids in an area to 'training camp" aka school . With "FDI" from places like Saudi Arabia , raising ( if that term can be used) a critical mass of frustrated and abused people to do your bidding becomes a cinch. Actually , I'll eat my words, the ideologues are pretty much in sync with economic realities.
Today, we often hear the term demographic dividend and simultaneously hear about the fact that the west is ageing. Now there may be an optimal population for a country , with a particular replacement ratio . However arriving at this figure needs a set of assumptions that inherently depends on the nature of the political dispensation.
Unfortunately , such an exercise has proved futile in the past and the primary reason for the failure of centrally planned economies lies in the fact that the population growth rate could not be targeted despite direct state intervention in some cases.
the number two has been arrived after carrying out a particular demographic exercise taking into account fertility rates etc. However it is somewhat arbitrary even though work has gone into determining this figure.
Regards
http://jingoworld.blogspot.com/