At 15:09 28/07/96 -0400, Robert Hettinga wrote:
He said there are many hypotheses about what causes this decline in fertility, including the commonly held one that people make babies as a form old age pension income :-)
That's true: when the state does not provide old-age pension, that's the only alternative, and surely not a bad one.
He also said that the obvious things like public health and education were good ways to increase life expectancy, but that the very best way to cause this "demographic transition" was a dramatic increase in personal income.
As I see it, having more children makes sound economic sense when you have child labor. You feed the child for 4-5 years, after which it contributes financially to the family for the rest of its short life. More stringent enforcement of anti child-labor legislation would help. Increase in life expectancy is also good, because then you need fewer children as insurance. The spread of the Internet, and the ability to post anonymously should help in exposing instances of violation of child-labor laws, and increasing outrage. Hopefully, it will also make it easier to spread literacy, which is arguably the best way to keep population down. I'd really like to know who this "he" is whom Robert is citing. Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta@cpsr.org http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/ finger amehta@cerfnet.com for public key