Global project 931-1170 · 1979 · South-East Consortium for International Development (SECID)

This report is part of a series of state-of-the-art papers financed under AID project 9311170, which are intended to provide AID officials with a better understanding of the impact of development activities and improved standards of living on population growth. This particular paper examines the relationship of fertility to income and wealth. Part I reviews the principal approaches in use today for analyzing the effect of income and wealth on fertility. Part II discusses the relationship of rural development activities to fertility, income, and wealth. Paradoxes abound in the relation of fertility to income and wealth. The relation, sometimes positive and sometimes negative, depends largely on whether one is considering the long or short run, the direct or indirect effect, the pure income effect or the substitution effect from economic development. Empirical findings are broadly consistent with a threshold relation of fertility first increases, then decreases as the level of income and development rises. Even at the higher levels of development, however, the inverse relation is small relative to the total variation in fertility. Factors other than income can explain much of this va

Source: DEC abstract, PN-AAG-932 (1979). The source's own text.