I concur with Eban that we should "put our energies into seeing that
population control is not about control, but instead, about choice."
Unfortunately, "choice" often becomes code for "control" in lower
income country settings.
The population problem is indisputably real, but analysis of the
problem often confounds rational behavior in the aggregate (i.e., at
the national or regional level) with the intrinsically micro level of
fertility decisions. In places where poverty is predominantly an
urban phenomenon and employment comes mainly through firms and
governments, broad and ambitious population control projects are
generally a sound objective. But where the poor are mainly semi-
subsistence farmers (as with the populations I work amongst in
Africa), many children are both cause and consequence of poverty.
Focusing on the latter point exclusively, the needs (1) to overcome
seasonal labor shortages, (2) to insure against the risk of parental
injury or illness that might impede cultivation or harvest, (3) to
ensure surviving caregivers in societies with no dependable social
safety net, and (4) to broaden the familial unit's range of possible
income sources are major economic incentives to childbearing often
raised by (usually male) peasants. The non-economic factors (e.g.,
prestige, tradition, religion) are perhaps even greater in some
places. Once one gets off the tarmac, it is by no means clear that
population control is either desired or desirable (neither is it
clear that it is not desired or desirable ... the point is that the
etiology of fertility is different in this context and may thus
warrant a different approach).
My concern about attempts to redirect energies (and increasingly
scarce financial, human and technical resources) toward population
control programs -- with the objective of improving the lot of current
and future populations -- is that such efforts will quickly move
beyond contexts in which they are well-conceived and appropriate,
squandering scarce opportunities or even doing real damage to a great
number. That has been the experience with "democratization",
"structural adjustment", and "integrated conservation and
development." Can we guard against the willy-nilly invocation of
population control programs if these become an international priority?
Chris Barrett
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Christopher B. Barrett Phone: (608) 262-9491
Depts. of Agricultural Economics Fax: (608) 262-4376
and Economics Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
University of Wisconsin-Madison
427 Lorch Street
Madison, WI 53706
