POPULATION PROBLEM RISING COST OF CHILDREN COULD AFFECT BIRTH-RATE

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33446, 30 January 1974, Page 16

POPULATION PROBLEM RISING COST OF CHILDREN COULD AFFECT BIRTH-RATE

(By

FRANCES CAIRNCROSS

in the "Guardian.")

(Reprinted by arrangement)

A wry grin has become the most appropriate expression to assume when wishing anyone a happy new year. For 1974 is going to be the year when it first became apparent to our post-war generation that no natural law ensures that we all become better off each year. It will be the year of recession and the year of the fastest-ever global inflation. It will also, thanks to a whim of the United Nations, be World Population Year.

The fashion in concern about population has acquired a new twist in the past few years. We used to be able to sit back and worry about the rate at which the Indian, the Mexican and the South American birth rates were climbing. Now we are encouraged to worry about our own responsibilities. Sometimes the argument is purely in terms of natural justice: why should India 1 have a Ministry of Population Planning but not Britain? Sometimes it is more sophisticated. A child in the rich world uses a far greater proportion of the world’s non-renewable resources than a child in the poor world. Therefore the growth in the population of the rich countries must be halted, and, if possible reversed. Economists have tended to fight rather shy of becoming too involved in the population debate. They have preferred to leave it to demographers and biologists. They have always been prepared to talk about the effects of population growth. But they have only in the past decade begun to admit that the crucial question — why do people have as many children as they do — may be one to which the answer is partly economic. This is an important discovery. It means that there may be more to reducing the rate of birth in India than just handing out contraceptives. It means that we may be able to see. a way of influencing the population growth of the rich countries. It means that it may be possible to resolve the old debate about whether more State aid for families with children will simply make the poor have more babies.

Biggest riddle

The biggest population riddle of all is why, as a country develops, its birth rate falls. When Malthus wrote, the population of Britain was doubling itself in half a century. In Britain — as in most of what are now developed countries — the 19th century saw first a dramatic fall in the death rate — then a period of massive population growth - then a dramatic fall in the birth rate. The most striking exception has been Japan, where the fall in the death rate did not come until this century, and where the fall in the birth rate has only been apparent in the past 15 years. The effects of these changes are interesting enough. Contrast the slowest and fastest growing countries of the past decade, the United Kingdom and Japan. In the United Kingdom, the number of births was at its maximum in 1900. For the past two decades, there has been a continuous rise in the proportion of pensioners in the population. The largest users of the National Health Service, the biggest

recipients of both social security and local welfare expenditure, are the old. Spending a head is greatest on the over-755. At the same time, the post-war baby boom meant that between 1951 and 1964 the population under 20 grew twice as fast as the total population. The overall dependency ratio — the proportion of children and of people of retirement age in the population — grew bv a third between 1941 and 1969.

Birth rate drop

Now contrast Japan. The rapid rise in population between 1900 and 1950 means that the population as a whole is much younger than in the United Kingdom. This is reflected in a lower death rate (seven per 1000 compared with 11 per 1000 in the United Kingdom). Since 1950, moreover, Japan has seen very dramatic fall in the birth rate.

It is impossible not to see some link between Japan's much smaller dependent population and the much lower proportion of G.N.P. taken in tax in Japan, or the much higher proportion of G.N.P. invested in industry. Much more of what every working person in Britain has earned over the past two decades has had to be used to build schools and hospitals and to pay pensions than has been the case in Japan. But the more interesting question is why this big drop in the birth rate has taken place. It is certainly not entirely due to the efforts of the London Rubber Company and the spread of more effective contraceptive techniques. Contrast the rates of population growth in France and the United States in the 19th century.

In France, with its settled peasant population, limited supply of new farm land and barely developed industry, the birth rate was through most of the 19th century about 23 per 1000. In North America, with its immense supplies of available land, there was no question of

having to divide a farm to provide for younger children. The birth rate touched 50 per 1000 — faster than present-day India.

I In Britain, the birth rate ‘accelerated at the beginning of the 19th century, ran at labour 35 per 1000 up to [about 1870, and then began to slow down. Why?

There can be no indisputable explanation, but the acceleration coincides strikingly with the Industrial Revolution, its first dip comes suspiciously close to the passing of the early Factory Acts, limiting the employment of children, and its more lasting decline follows the introduction of compulsory education. When children could be wage earners at an early age, the costs of bringing up a family might be lower than when they could only be employed bn a small peasant farm; when children had to go to school, the costs rose.

Developed countries

It may be that compulsory education and firm restrictions on the employment of children could do for the birth rate in the developing world what they appear to have done for Britain. But what about the size of the family in the developed countries? Again, there is increasing evidence that economics has something to do with the number of children that people have. It is not a straightforward connection. There is very little obvious relationship between income level and desired family size. One recent survey in the United States showed that poor women wanted on average 3.6 children, and rich women 3.4 Children.

There is some evidence that the poor have bigger families than the rich — and that the very well off have more children than the moderately well off, but it is by no means unambiguous. In England, the occupational group with the smallest families are clerks, and with the biggest families unskilled workers.

There is, on the other hand, strong evidence that education is linked with family size — and particularly the education of women. The longer women are educated, the later they marry, the more likely they are to return to work after marriage, the higher their earnings are likely to be, the later they are likely to start a family, and the smaller their family is likely to be. Could it be, economists are beginning to ask themselves, that women trade off their desire for a family with the opportunity cost — the loss of earnings and job satisfaction involved? If so, a solution to the population problem in both the rich world and the poor may be in sight: educate women, open as wide a range of interesting jobs as possible to them, and make it as easy as possible for them to return to interesting jobs after having children.

Malthus assumed that the cost of children remained constant. The doomsday fears of the population bomb are based on the same supposition. But with the introduction of compulsory education, with the raising of the school leaving age, with more and better-paid job opportunities for women, the cost of children in the developed world has been rising. It may not be too optimistic to expect that this process will start to slow down the birth rate in the Third World; that it wiil ensure that when the birth rate starts to fall, it will fall much faster than it did in Europe in the late 19th century; and that it will reduce family size in the rich countries even further in the years ahead.