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On the Possibility of Increasing Fertility in the Underdeveloped Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

John T. Krause
John T. Krause
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Extract

In the last issue Richard A. Easterlin criticized some arguments which I have advanced. Because I think that his main point is at least partially irrelevant, I shall briefly summarize my argument. I suggested that demographic growth in the pre-industrial West was determined primarily by levels of fertility, levels which depended in large part on economic factors, and that mortality has been the major variable in the demographic growth of most less developed countries today mainly because they do not control fertility in the interest of the maintenance of a given standard of living. From this basic difference, I drew a number of consequences. Among them, but by no means the most important, was the one to which Easterlin devoted most attention. It was my statement: “Hence, there is the possibility that improved nutrition and health will increase birth rates fantastically.”1 Easterlin omitted the first six words of the sentence from his quotation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 2 , Issue 4 , July 1960 , pp. 485 - 487
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1960

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References

1 Krause, J. T., “Some Implications of Recent Work in Historical Demography,” CSSH, I (1958–1959), pp. 164–88, p. 187Google Scholar.

2 Easterlin, R. A., “Implications of the Demographic History of Developed Countries for Present-Day Underdeveloped Nations: A Note,” CSSH, II (1959–1960), pp. 374–8Google Scholar.

3 Krause, loc. cit., p. 187. Also, the rise in the birth rates in the formerly malarial regions of Ceylon from 39 to 50 per 1,000 is impressive, if not fantastic. Ceylon, Department of Census and Statistics, Fertility Trends in Ceylon, Monograph No. 3 (Government Press, 1954)Google Scholar. I am indebted to Dr. Sarkar for this last reference.

When I wrote my article, I had not yet seen Henry, L.'s “Charactéristiques démographiques des pays sous-développés: Natalité, Nuptialité, Fécondité”, in Le “Tiers Monde.” Sous-développement et développement, ed. Balandier, G. (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1958), pp. 138–49Google Scholar. Henry also finds some cause for alarm, although his emphasis is somewhat different from mine. I would agree that in some countries various customs limit fertility and that modernization may break down these customs. Another work on customs and fertility is Carr-Saunders, A. M., The Population Problem (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1922)Google Scholar.

4 Prost, H., La Bulgarie de 1912 à 1930 (Paris, Éditions Pierre Roger, 1932), especially p. 219Google Scholar. Clark, Colin, The Conditions of Economic Progress, 2d ed. (London, MacMillan and Co. Ltd., 1951), pp. 160–61Google Scholar.

5 Bulgaria was probably more like Turkey than India and Turkish marital fertility seems to have been about 25 per cent higher than the Indian, see Table V of my article.

6 This supposition, and it is no more than that, is based on Moore, W. E., Economic Demography of Eastern and Southern Europe (Geneva, League of Nations, 1945), pp. 250–52Google Scholar.

7 Easterlin, loc. cit.