It is easy and plausible to attribute high birth rates in
developing countries to ignorance about sex or to a lack of supply of
contraceptives. Why would anyone
who is already under financial stress want to take on the financial burden of
being responsible for nine children? I certainly wouldn’t. While it seems completely
impractical to put oneself in this situation, the authors in chapter 5 show
that many families in developing countries are fully aware about the risks of
unsafe sex and make conscious decisions to produce large families. The authors have come to find
that making contraceptives free and available does little to incentivize the
poor to use them. They also find
that education does little to keep young boys and girls from having unprotected
sex.
What
I found most interesting about this chapter is how much societal norms differ
between cultures. One of the
reasons I answered in the negative to the question I asked myself above is that
I do not live in those countries nor do I understand or share their norms and
views on what is socially acceptable.
For me, having nine children might not be the best life decision and I’d
imagine my family would feel the same way. On the other hand, for Pak Sudarno, a father of nine living in
Indonesia where social expectations make the children responsible for taking
care of their elders, having nine children increases his probability of getting
financial aid in the future.
Similar
to the example I used above about Pak Sudarno, the authors argue that in China
children are usually responsible for taking care of their elders. But in 1972 when family planning was
introduced, there was a sharp decline in births, which caused the parents to save
more for their own future.
“Households
that had their first child after 1972 have one less child on average than those
who had that child before 1972, and their savings rates are approximately 10
percentage points higher”(120).
Despite
the author’s argument that the Chinese savings rate increased in 1972 due to a
fall in births caused by the introduction of family planning, I would argue
that this may have an impact on the savings rate but there might be other
economic factors causing the savings rate to go up as well. Parents might have started saving more
in order to invest more in their single child’s education and college
career.
Y(Savings
Rate)=B1(family planning)+B2(fertility rate)+B3(college education for child)
My
dummy variable in this regression model would be whether the parents made an
investment in their child’s college education. If the child went to college they would receive a 1, and if
they did not they would receive a 0.
If this dummy variable proved to be statistically significant it could potentially
show that the parents were saving to invest in their child rather than saving
to take care of themselves in the future.
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