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I assumed he was referring to the idea of families in areas with higher rates of infant mortality and childhood disease having more kids to perpetuate their fam
by m0nastic 16y ago
I assumed he was referring to the idea of families in areas with higher rates of infant mortality and childhood disease having more kids to perpetuate their families.
If kids are less likely to die, then in theory, parents don't need to have as large a family in order to ensure that some survive.
- adammichaelc 16y agoInteresting. I always thought that people stopped having large families mostly due to the economic reasons. ie In an agrarian society more kids = more wealth because they can work on the farm and so on, whereas in an industrialized society more kids = less wealth because they mostly eat up resources for 2 decades or more.
- m0nastic 16y agoI don't have any data to back up my theory (so by all means take it as an uninformed opinion), but I think that was probably more true in the past. I'm pretty sure that nowadays, counter to what might seem logical, there is a direct correlation between poverty and family size (ie: the poorer the culture, the more children they tend to have). I know I've read articles about India where this seems to be true, at least.
- MichaelSalib 16y agoI don't think your analysis is correct: in general, most families in the agrarian developing world do not have a surplus of land, so larger families are not helpful....
- ceejayoz 16y agoEven a small amount of land is labour intensive when you're farming it by hand.