Articles

• Population and Resources: An Exploration of Reproductive and Environmental Externalities

Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics and Chairman, Faculty of Economics and Politics, University of Cambridge; and Fellow, St. John's College, Cambridge; member of the Advisory Board, Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics, Stockholm

This article identifies four types of social externalities associated with fertility behavior. Three are shown to be pronatalist in their effects. These three are exemplified by the way theories of economic growth treat fertility and natural resources, the way population growth and economic stress in poor countries are seen by environmental and resource economists, and the way development economists accommodate environmental stress in their analysis of poverty. It is shown that the fourth type of externality, in which children are regarded as an end in themselves, can even provide an invidious link between fertility decisions and the use of the local natural-resource base among poor rural households in poor countries. The fourth type is used to develop a theory of fertility transitions in the contemporary world; the theory views such transitions as disequilibrium phenomena. [26, no. 4 (Dec 00): 643–689]

• Unmet Need for Family Planning in Developing Countries and Implications for Population Policy (PDF)

John B. Casterline, Senior Associate, Policy Research Division, Population Council
Steven W. Sinding, Professor of Clinical Public Health, Heilbrunn Center for Population and Family Health, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University

Unmet need for family planning has been a core concept in international population discourse for several decades. This article reviews the history of unmet need and the development of increasingly refined methods of its empirical measurement and delineates the main questions that have been raised about unmet need during the past decade, some of which concern the validity of the concept and others its role in policy debates. The discussion draws heavily on empirical research conducted during the 1990s, much of it localized, in-depth studies combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Of the causes of unmet need other than those related to access to services, three emerge as especially salient: lack of necessary knowledge about contraceptive methods, social opposition to their use, and health concerns about possible side effects. The article argues that the concept of unmet need for family planning, by joining together contraceptive behavior and fertility preferences, encourages an integration of family planning programs and broader development approaches to population policy. By focusing on the fulfillment of individual aspirations, unmet need remains a defensible rationale for the formulation of population policy and a sensible guide to the design of family planning programs.[26, no. 4 (Dec 00): 691–723]

• Local and Foreign Models of Reproduction in Nyanza Province, Kenya

Susan Cotts Watkins, Professor of Sociology and Associate, Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania

This article uses colonial archival records, surveys conducted in the 1960s, and surveys and focus group discussions in the 1990s to describe three distinct but temporally overlapping cultural models of reproduction in a rural community in Kenya between the 1930s and the present. The first model, "large families are rich," was slowly undermined by developments brought about by the integration of Kenya into the British empire. This provoked the collective formulation of a second local model, "small families are progressive," which retained the same goal of wealth but viewed a smaller family as a better strategy for achieving it. The third model, introduced by the global networks of the international population movement in the 1960s, augmented the second model with the deliberate control of fertility using clinic-provided methods of family planning. By the 1990s this global model had begun to be domesticated as local clinics routinely promoted family planning and as men and women in Nyanza began to use family planning and to tell others of their motivations and experiences.[26, no. 4 (Dec 00): 725–759]

• Conditioning Factors for Fertility Decline in Bengal: History, Language Identity, and Openness to Innovations (PDF)

Alaka Malwade Basu, Senior Research Associate, Cornell University, Ithaca Sajeda Amin, Associate, Policy Research Division, Population Council

This article argues that looking solely for the immediate causes of reproductive change may distort our understanding of policy options by failing to take into account the historical and cultural factors that affect not only the impact of policies and programs but their very nature and existence. The article examines the historical origins and spread of "modern" ideas in Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal in India. It concludes that a colonial history in which education and modernization processes took hold very early among the elites in the larger Bengal region was paradoxically accompanied by a strong allegiance to the Bengali language. This strong sense of language identity has facilitated and reinforced the diffusion of modern ideas both within and between the two Bengali-speaking regions. Thus, to understand the fertility decline in Bangladesh, for example, one needs to look also at cultural boundaries. In this case, the cultural commonality through language facilitates the spread of new ideas across the two Bengals. In turn, the strong sense of language identity has facilitated mass mobilization more easily and intensely within the two Bengals. Shaped by these processes, Bangladesh and West Bengal today are more amenable to social change than many other parts of South Asia and the Middle East. [26, no. 4 (Dec 00): 761–794]

Notes and Commentary

• Perceiving Mortality Decline (PDF)

Mark R. Montgomery, Senior Associate, Policy Research Division, Population Council, and Professor of Economics, State University of New York at Stony Brook

In the demographic literature on developing countries, studies of mortality perceptions are conspicuous by their absence. Perhaps it has been assumed that when mortality declines, the decline will be quickly recognized by individuals and will then influence their demographic decisions. The possibility of substantial lags and biases in risk perception, which cause individual perceptions to diverge from the changing empirical realities, has not been much considered. Yet studies in cognitive and social psychology indicate that individual mortality perceptions are likely to be diffuse and may well be biased upward in relation to the declining empirical risks. If individuals are poorly equipped to recognize mortality decline, so too may be social groups—social learning will not necessarily correct individual misapprehensions. This note discusses the perceptual limitations that may delay recognition of mortality decline and examines the implications for demographic behavior in three areas: modern health care, fertility control, and children's schooling. [26, no. 4 (Dec 00): 795–819]

Archives

• Jean-Baptiste Moheau on the Moral Causes of Diminished Fertility

Book Reviews

• Vaclav Smil, Feeding the World: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century, reviewed by Walter P. Falcon
   
• Robert William Fogel, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism, reviewed by Richard A. Easterlin
   
• Massimo Livi Bacci, The Population of Europe: A History, reviewed by George T. F. Acsádi
   
• Richard G. Rogers, Robert A. Hummer, and Charles B. Nam, Living and Dying in the USA: Behavioral, Health, and Social Differentials of Adult Mortality, reviewed by Lado T. Ruzicka

Short Reviews

• Neil J. Diamant, Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949–1968
   
• International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, World Disasters Report 2000: Focus on Public Health
   
• Christian Joppke, Immigration and the Nation-State: The United States, Germany, and Great Britain
   
• Peng Xizhe with Guo Zhigang (eds.), The Changing Population of China
   
• Sebastião Salgado, Migrations: Humanity in Transition
   
• United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2000
   
• United Nations Population Division, The World at Six Billion
   
• United Nations Population Division, World Population Monitoring 1998. Health and Mortality: Selected Aspects
   
• World Bank, Can Africa Claim the 21st Century?

Documents

• Globalization and Inequality: A Norwegian Report
   
• An Italian Statement on International Migration