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  • Title: Land availability and rural fertility in Northeastern Brazil.
    Author: Merrick TW.
    Journal: Res Popul Econ; 1981; 3():93-121. PubMed ID: 12265067.
    Abstract:
    The relation between land and demographic factors in 2 regions of Brazil--the Northeast and the Amazon--are examined. The Northeast is Brazil's poorest region, with a tradition of export oriented plantation agriculture combined with subsistence farming. For the last 3 decades, it has experienced a high rate of natural increase relative to its capacity to absorb additional population. The Amazon, Brazil's last remaining agricultural frontier, has been the target of several recent government incentive programs and other initiatives aimed at increasing utilization, including the Trans-Amazon Highway. The analysis uses data that have been assembled from published tables in Brazil's 1970 population and agricultural censuses and from unpublished tables made available by the country's Census Bureau. The tables provide information on demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the rural population for 106 microregions in 8 Brazilian states selected from the 2 regions. In terms of the variability in indices of the number of children ever born, their survival, school attendance, and farm labor participation, the range in the Northeast and the Amazon is at least as great as that found in the rural Southeast. The significance of differences, however, varies in several important respects. The evidence of the Southeast suggested a pattern of incipient fertility decline relating to conscious individual fertility control, i.e., a response to factors associated with increased costs of raising children. In the Northeast and the Amazon, the links between land availability, land tenure patterns, and fertility are related to supply factors. No evidence exists that fertility differences in these regions are determined by conscious individual reproductive choices. Thus the observed number of children for rural married women aged 30-34 represent the maximum number that they could have within existing limits on their capacity to reproduce. This number could be less than, equal to, or possibly greater than the number that they desire, but in the absence of control, it is supply and not demand that is identified by this number. Thus the analysis of observed fertility focuses on the impact of land availability, tenure, and literacy on supply. The analysis shows that the direct effects are balanced or offset by indirect effects through mediating variables. That supply rather than demand conditions are more influential in the number of children does not imply that other aspects of the rural households' demographic behavior related to demand factors are inoperative for investment in child quality. In the case of schooling and child labor, the behavior of rural households exhibits patterns that are consistent with demand theory.
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