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  • Title: Are families poor because they are large or are they large because they are poor?
    Author: Pernia EM.
    Journal: Popul Forum; 1982; 8(2):24-5. PubMed ID: 12279386.
    Abstract:
    In the Philippines time allocation studies suggest that children cost considerable amounts of time and energy on the part of the mother and other siblings in addition to direct financial outlays which figure prominently. Yet, these costs seem to be compensated for by economic and noneconomic benefits. The time costs of children are moderated to the extent that mother's time has a low opportunity cost, given lack of marketable skills or sheer absence of employment opportunities. It is at the expense of investment in human capital (in terms of education and health) that economic benefits from child labor are forthcoming. As neither unemployment of the mother nor child labor is desirable, it would seem that economic benefits from children are expensive. The child's mental and physical development tends to be impaired due to deficient health, nutrition, and education inputs because family resources and parental care have to be spread so thinly among the many competing demands of the large family. Mother's health is negatively affected by frequent and closely spaced pregnancies, and she is effectively prevented from actual or potential participation in development. It is to these less immediate and not directly observable disadvantages of a large family that parents must be sensitized so that they will realize the need to limit family size. From the social perspective, the population program may be viewed as a strategy for human resource development. The challenge to policymakers has become formidable. Due to rapidly increasing population, the need to telescope the reduction of income inequality and poverty has become urgent. Continuing population growth tends to nullify whatever advances are made toward the distributional objective. Population and development policy needs to be directed to the poor in rural areas in general and more specifically to the rural poor in the backward regions of the Visayas, Bicol, Bocos, and Northern Mindanao. Given the extreme poverty of these groups, the family planning programs would seem to require complementary development inputs such as health, nutrition, and education. A less expensive strategy may be sufficient for the comparatively better off regions and social groups.
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