In chapter 5 of Poor Economics, the authors discuss family size in the under developed countries that they have studied. They ask the question whether families want to have large families or if there are out side sources that cause family size to be much larger in these countries. They also look at the effects of having large families in these areas. They discuss fertility decisions among the poor in these countries, contraception in those areas, family dynamics, and the economics of large families and how children can be of financial use to the parents.
The chapter talks about areas with family-planning clinics versus areas without them and how it affected fertility rates in those areas. The book states that though the areas with clinics did have lower fertility rates, it was not due to the clinics themselves. The clinics were most abundant where people wanted them to be. In other words, people demanded these clinics and therefore they were built in those areas. However, the clinics had no direct effect on fertility. Despite what the book concludes, my hypothesis about fertility rates and family-planning clinics would be: the more family-planning clinics, the lower the fertility rates. I would test this by collecting data on the number of family-planning clinics in different areas and the related fertility rates in those areas.
My guess is that there would be other factors that effect fertility rates outside of whether or not family-planning clinics exist. They may be population, family income, marital status of the mother, and perhaps whether there was access to good education (people may not start families in areas where they cannot send their children to school). My model would look something like this:
Fertility Rate = B#family-planning clinics + Bpopulation + BMedian family income + B#of schools + E
The dummy variable in this equation could be the marital status of the mother. If she was married she would be a 1 and if she were not married she would be a 0. If I believe that being married causes a woman to have more children I would expect the coefficient of my dummy variable to be a positive number. I wouldn't expect it to be very high numerically because I don't think that being married increases fertility rates by a huge number, but I would expect it to be positive. If it were positive it would tell me the married women, on average, have more babies than do unmarried women. To tell whether or not this variable is significant I would look at the t-statistic that I get from running a t-test. After seeing that value I could determine whether or not this dummy variable of being married or not were significant.
I think that your model here would be effective. My only problem with this chapter is that they try to quantitatively identify variables they think may influence population size. I think there are a number of variables that are not numerically measurable when determining why family size is so large. Being able to pinpoint an exact reason for having several children is not always black and white.
ReplyDeleteChris-- your hypothesis about the dummy variable that marital status has a positive relationship with birth rates is interesting. The book argues that in developing countries, women often engage in birth with older men in hopes that the man will choose to be financially responsible for the child. They seem to argue that women have children before they are married. But the authors also say that families have multiple children in hope that they will support their elders in the future. It would be interesting to see the data on this relationship between marriage and birthrates. Also do you think divorce or men simply "walking out" on their children would have a large effect on this relationship?
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