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  • Title: The changing role of breastfeeding in economic development: a theoretical exposition.
    Author: Butz WP.
    Journal: Res Hum Cap Dev; 1981; 2():95-117. PubMed ID: 12265322.
    Abstract:
    This paper develops a model of breastfeeding, contraception, and birth spacing that includes physiological and behavioral aspects and yields a number of testable predictions concerning influences of particular factors on breastfeeding. The model is built on the assumption that breastfeeding is a costly activity for most women, requiring time and nutrients, neither of which is freely available. Given these costs, the fact that many women do breastfeed suggests that it also produces benefits that people value such as the survival and development of the child and birth spacing. The model also assumes that mothers respond to changes in the cost of the activity and that of other means of contraception and feeding babies. It implies that mothers will breastfeed less when their time spent in other ways is more valuable and when substitutes for breastfeeding are more readily available. The author begins with a model of birth spacing and child survival that includes the roles of breastfeeding, and its substitutes. The number of live births is influenced by economic returns that raise family income, and utility returns to the parents. Given a desired number of surviving children and a particular probability of child survival, the couple can achieve its resulting desired number of births and the implied average births interval by adjusting either the length of postpartum amenorrhea or the length of the interval. A shift in the demand (supply) curve causes a larger shift in the amount of breastfeeding when the supply (demand) curve is more elastic. When there is an active wetnursing market, variations in factors that underlie a woman's breastfeeding supply curve may affect her period of postpartum amenorrhea but not the survival or development of her children. Also, shifts in factors that influence woman's demand for breastfeeding may affect her infant's development and survival but not a woman's fecundity. Some implications of this model are: 1) an increase in the market demand for female labor tends to reduce breastfeeding if the jobs are less than fully compatible with maternal child care, 2) factors that reduce the supply curve of a woman's breastfeeding tend to reduce her actual breastfeeding more if alternative weaning foods are hygienically available at a constant price, and 3) an increased supply of modern contraceptives from local stores or family planning outlets tends to reduce breastfeeding. If public policy can increase the supply of effective contraceptives and the hygienic, effective use of weaning foods, mothers will have the means to maintain and increase their birth spacing and the survival/development of their infants. Research must identify family factors related to breastfeeding.
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