ARTICLE TITLE: Population, Poverty and the Local Environment AUTHOR/SOURCE: Partha S.

Dasgupta MAIN POINTS: People blame population growth as a cause of poverty and environmental degradation. Others say that the elements of this casual chain is that poverty is the cause rather than the consequence of increasing population Economists do not regard poverty, population growth and local environment as interconnected. Collected research shows that none of the three elements directly causes the other two. New perspective has significant implications for policies aimed at improving life for some of the world's most impoverished inhabitants. In contrast with the new perspective, with its focus on local experience, popular tracts on the environment and population growth usually taken a global view. They emphasized the deleterious effects that a large population would have on our planet. In developing countries, decisions on whether to have a child and on how to share education, food, work; health care and local resources are in large measure made within small entities such as households. Households assume various guises in different parts of the world. Those who enjoy the greatest power within a family can be identified by the way the household's resources are divided. Sharing of resources within a household is often unequal even when differences in needs are taken into account. Men wield more influence, even though women typically bear the greater cost. The number of live babies a woman could have is she survived her childbearing years is called the total fertility rate, which is between 6 and 8 in Sub-Saharan Africa. Each successful birth involves a year and a half of pregnancy and breast-feeding. In a society where female life expectancy at birth is 50 years and the fertility rate is seven, nearly half of a woman's adult life is spent carrying a child or breast-feeding it. Another indicator of the price women pay is maternal mortality. In the poor countries, complications related to pregnancy constitute the largest cause of death in their reproductive years. Due to the high costs, women would opt for fewer children. Birth rates are highest in societies where women have the least power in the family. Lack of paid employment and education limits a woman's ability to make decisions and promotes population growth. Lack of income-generating employment reduces women's power more directly than lack of education. If children are needed to work inside and outside of home, then keeping them in school is costly. Importance of gender inequality to overpopulation in poor nations is fortunately gaining international recognition.

United Nations Conference on Population and Development emphasized women's reproductive rights and the means by which they could be protected and promoted. When both parents participate in the decision to have a child, there are several pathways through which the choice becomes harmful to the community. Routes have been uncovered by inquiring into the various motives for procreation. One motive relates to children as ends in themselves. It ranges from the desire to have children because they are playful and enjoyable, to the desire to obey the dictates of tradition and religion. There are norms encouraging high fertility rates that no household desires unilaterally break. So long as all others aim at large families, no household on its own will wish to deviate. Other motives for procreation are viewing children as productive assets. It stems from children's being valuable to their parents not only for future income but also as a source of current income. Third World countries are subsistence economies. Labor is needed even for simple tasks Members of a household may have to spend as much as five to six hours a day fetching water and collection fodder and wood. Children are then needed to work even when their parents are in their prime. Usefulness of each extra hand increases with declining availability of resources. The need for many hands can lead to a destructive situation, especially when the parents do not have to pay the full price of rearing their children but share those costs with the community. This form of control enabled households to pool their risks. The process of economic development can erode traditional methods of control. Social rules are endangered by civil strife and by the takeover of resources by landowners or the state. As norms degrade, parents pass some of the costs of children on to the community by overexploiting the commons. If access to shared resources continues, parents produce too many children, leading to crowding and susceptibility to disease and more pressure on the environmental resources. No household takes into account the harm it inflicts on others when bringing forth another child. Parental costs of procreation are also lower when relatives provide a helping hand. Price of carrying a child is paid by the mother; cost of rearing the child is shared among kinship. Marriage normally mean est. a new household, it also meant that parents bore the cost of rearing their children. Perception of both low costs and high benefits of procreation induces households to produce too many children. 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.

When this happens fertility and environmental degradation reinforce each other. Findings by the World bank revealed positive correlations among poverty, fertility and deterioration of the local environment. Victims hit hardest are the migrants and the dispossessed. Families with greater access to resources are in a position to limit their size and propel themselves into still higher income levels. Parental demand for children rather than an unmet need for contraceptives in large measure explain reproductive behavior in developing countries.

AUTHOR'S POINT: The author explains the reasoning behind why a family would want to limit the number of children in their household or have a big number of children in their household. One reason for limiting procreation is the high cost of the woman. The woman with a lifespan of 50 years is said to have babies in their womb and breast-feeding them occurs half of her lifetime. The other reason is maternal mortality and the risk of death for childbirth. Another reason why some have a lot of children is because of the lack of resources. The lack of resources influences the mother to procreate to have the children help get the resources. The consequence of this is that there will be less and less resources as more children are born. In contrast, families limit the size of their family because they have a great way of accessing resources. MY THOUGHTS: While reading this article I learned a lot of new information. I learned the reasons why some families would want to have a lot of children and why some families wouldnt want to have a lot of children. Some families choose to have a lot of children due to the amount of resources that comes a long while having a baby. I found this article to be very interesting also because the author stated some interesting facts. Price of carrying a child is paid by the mother; cost of rearing the child is shared among kinship. So what? Religion, tradition, costs and availability of resources affects the number of offsprings a family wants to have. What if..? Amount of offspring was limited by law? Says Who? Partha S. Dasgupta

What does this remind you of? Games: If the game is difficult, you will most like need more people on your team which is just like families who can't reach resources, they need more children.