Population, Poverty and the Local Environment
Key Points:
The author's point of this article is to provide reasoning to why a family would want to limit the amount of children they have in a household or to why they would want a large number of children in their household. One reason why a family would want to limit the amount of children in a household is because the women is said to spend nearly half her adult life either carrying a child in her womb or breast-feeding it. A women living in sub- Sahara Africa has only a 50 year life expectancy and the fertility rate is about seven years. Another reason why a family would want to limit the amount of children they bring into the world is because in most poor countries, complications related to pregnancy constitute the largest single cause of death of women in their reproductive years. In sub- Sahara Africa as many as one women dies for every 50 live births. One reason why a family would want to have a large number of children in their family is because the lack of resources the family has, the more a mother wants to have children so they can help get the family more resources. But as the family grows bigger and bigger, the less resources will be available.
My Thoughts:
This article is very interesting. I have never really thought of why women would want to have more and more kids but I now know. I feel that the dessision on having more children and increasing a family that is living in poverty is a bad choice. Families need to take care of themselves before they want to try and bring a new baby into this world that they cannot provide for. Men sometimes have the power to say if they want a child and women have to listen to them whether they disagree or not and I feel like that is not right. It is a women's body, they have to bear the cost.
- Some would point to population growth as the cause of poverty and environmental degradation
- Economists do not regard poverty, population growth and local environment as interconnected
- Population growth, poverty and degradation local resources often fuel one another
- Used an idealized version of the concept to explore how choices made within a household would respond to changes in the outside world
- Control over family's choices is, after all, often held unequally. If I wanted to understand how decisions were made I would have to know who was doing the deciding
- Inequalities prevail over fertility choices as well. Here also men wield more influence, even though women typically bear the greater cost.
- Everyone has different opinions on what causes poverty
- If children are needed to work inside and outside of home, then keeping them in school is costly
- There are norms encouraging high fertility rates that no household desires unilaterally break
- No household takes into account the harm it inflicts on others when bringing forth another child
- As community resources are depleted, more hands are needed to gather fuel and water for daily use
- More children are produced, further damaging the local environment and in turn providing the household with an incentive to enlarge
The author's point of this article is to provide reasoning to why a family would want to limit the amount of children they have in a household or to why they would want a large number of children in their household. One reason why a family would want to limit the amount of children in a household is because the women is said to spend nearly half her adult life either carrying a child in her womb or breast-feeding it. A women living in sub- Sahara Africa has only a 50 year life expectancy and the fertility rate is about seven years. Another reason why a family would want to limit the amount of children they bring into the world is because in most poor countries, complications related to pregnancy constitute the largest single cause of death of women in their reproductive years. In sub- Sahara Africa as many as one women dies for every 50 live births. One reason why a family would want to have a large number of children in their family is because the lack of resources the family has, the more a mother wants to have children so they can help get the family more resources. But as the family grows bigger and bigger, the less resources will be available.
My Thoughts:
This article is very interesting. I have never really thought of why women would want to have more and more kids but I now know. I feel that the dessision on having more children and increasing a family that is living in poverty is a bad choice. Families need to take care of themselves before they want to try and bring a new baby into this world that they cannot provide for. Men sometimes have the power to say if they want a child and women have to listen to them whether they disagree or not and I feel like that is not right. It is a women's body, they have to bear the cost.