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The impact of fertility and family size on the economic status of rural households in India is examined. Investigations of a natural experiment using micro data of rural households reveal that family size does affect poverty as per capita income lowers due to high dependency ratio.

The fertility opportunity hypothesis suggests that individuals and couples adjust family size in response to their perception that economic opportunity is increasing (or diminishing.) A sense that opportunities are expanding encourages a relatively high, even rising, family size target. On the contrary, the perception that opportunities and resources will fall short of satisfying the aspirations of oneself or family lead to lowering family size targets. The literature suggests that family size target translates into completed family size on the order of 85 to 90 percent. The economic collapse of former 'Asian tigers' in late summer, 1997, offered a chance to test the hypothesis prospectively. In, 1998, an author (Abernethy) predicted that fertility rates in the nine Asian tiger economies would fall during the 1997-1999 interval at a faster rate than had been observed in immediately preceding two-year intervals. This paper reports the results of tests of the hypothesis with respect to the Asian tigers and several other country clusters for which no particular prediction was made. Preliminary findings appear to support the fertility opportunity hypothesis. KEY WORDS: fertility opportunity hypothesis; Asian tigers; perception.

This paper incorporates the timing of childbearing into a growth model with endogenous fertility. It analyzes a model in which individuals' human capital stock depends positively on their education and parental human capital and in which producing and raising children and acquiring human capital are time intensive. The model highlights how changes in the human capital stock interact with individuals' timing of childbearing in affecting the evolution of the economy. It shows that increases in the human capital stock raise the opportunity cost of having children while young and induce individuals to delay childbearing. That, in turn, accelerates human capital accumulation in the future. The model also demonstrates that early childbearing may lead to a development trap with low human capital.

The People of India database of the Anthropological Survey of India documents 631 cultural, ecological, and economic traits of the 4635 communities to which the entire Indian population is assigned. Focusing on 1342 communities of South India, we looked for correlates of low (1 or 2 children) and high (4 or more children) desired family size (DFS) reported as the norm for any given community by key informants. We found 10 cultural and 18 economic traits to be significantly correlated to high DFS and 21 cultural and 9 economic traits to low DFS. The economic traits so identified are compatible with high family size being desired by parents who have little capability of investing in quality of offspring, but whose children contribute economically from an early age. In contrast, communities desiring low family size are part of the modern intensive agriculture/organized industry/services sector and invest heavily in educating their children. A composite index based on 27 economic traits (CEI) has a high predictive value with respect to the DFS for the entire set of 4635 Indian communities. The 31 cultural traits highly correlated to high or low DFS constitute 5 clusters that can be identified as characterizing scheduled tribes, scheduled castes, rural and landless lower castes, urban upper castes, and Moslems. Whereas economic traits have similar influence on DFS within each of these ethnic categories, Moslems demonstrate a significantly higher DFS for lower values of CEI.

Large families are generally believed to be poorer in developing countries. However, the basis for this view is questionable. Strong evidence of a negative correlation between size and consumption per person is not convincing given the scope for size economies in consumption. The correlation between poverty and size disappears for the case of Pakistan when the size elasticity of the cost of living is 0.6.

It is proposed that family size as a choice model is a vital component of economic models. The advantages and disadvantages of having children are examined, as well as how these issues fit in with economic theories of household choice. The analysis also addresses the economic factors that may have an impact on timings of births, the degree of freedom couples have in determining their family size, and the dynamic aspects of family planning.

Socio-economic data and blood samples were obtained from 242 school children in Bangladesh to determine the effect of family size and income on the biochemical indices of urban children. Results show that children from smaller families have higher values for hemoglobin and vitamin A compared to children coming from big families. Children from families with high income also showed higher serum vitamin A and lower serum copper compared to the lower income group. These results show that family size and income play important roles in determining biochemical indices of urban school children.

The equivalence scales used to adjust for differences in family composition when measuring poverty exhibit considerable variation. This paper suggests an alternative approach which allows for differences in social judgments regarding the treatment of different types of family and examines the relation with the choice of poverty measure. The resulting dominance criteria cannot provide a complete ranking but allow the extent of disagreement to be identified. Their application is illustrated by the example of changes in child benefits.

Households survey data and family histories from three highland Philippine communities are analyzed in terms of the contributions adult children living apart from parents make to parents. Differential among the contributions of adult children are related to developmental variation within sibling sets and to occupational diversity promoted by differential educational attainment. This diversity within the sibling set is treated as a reflection of family and household strategies to reduce economic risk. These household and family strategies can be expected to vary among communities and may run counter to the aims of national educational and family planning policies.

I SAT WITH two U.S. visitors on rough wooden benches in a one-room cement house in El Nasseriya, Egypt. Half a dozen local men in long cotton robes and floppy [...]

The determination of the different needs of families of different compositions is necessary in order to ensure horizontal equity in tax/transfer policies. Despite the seeming simplicity of the problem, a consensus as to the appropriate means of determining relative need remains elusive. One approach which has been proposed has been to use social surveys to analyse the relationship between subjective evaluations of well-being and incomes. This paper examines such methods, and discusses the key assumptions upon which they rest. An explanation is advanced as to why these methods may lead to an understatement of the differences in relative needs of different family types.

This article examines the relationship between income and completed family size in empirical fertility models. The relationship, which is hypothesized to be positive, often is negative in empirical studies. This perverse result is thought to occur because of the many correlations between income and other factors that affect fertility. In this research, these other factors--such as the net price of a child, the opportunity cost of the wife's time, and supply factors--are statistically controlled, and the income effect is positive and significant. When the net price of a child is not controlled, however, the income effect becomes negative and significant.

If parents depend on their children for security in old age, then a social security program should decrease fertility, ceteris paribus. The main contribution of this article is the use of the choice theoretic calculus to derive a testable model that shows the effect of social security on fertility, private intergenerational giving, and saving. A second part of this article estimates a linear fertility equation suggested by the theory. The results support the conclusion that social security decreased complete family size in the United States over the period 1933-1977, but that the effect was small. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)