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  1. 1

    The water crisis and population. [Pamphlet collection].

    Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO]


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  2. 2

    [Third World cities: points of accumulation, centers of distribution] Les villes du Tiers Monde: theatres d'accumulation, centres de diffusion.

    Armstrong WR; McGee TG

    Tiers-Monde. 1985 Oct-Dec; 26(104):823-40.

    Attention was called over 3 decades ago to the very rapid growth of Third World cities and the significance of the differences between their patterns of urbanization and those of industrialized countries. Their demographic growth occurred much faster and depended much more heavily on high fertility, their economies were geared more to export of raw materials than to manufacturing and were unable to create massive numbers of jobs to absorb the growing labor force except in the unproductive tertiary sector, and it appeared unlikely that they would be able to produce entrepreneurial classes of their own. Several economic developments during the 1970s affected the world economy and the patterns of urbanization of the Third World: the decline of the principal capitalist economies and the multiple increases in the price of oil, the floating exchange rate, the considerable increase in consumer goods, and the increasing costs of labor in industrialized countries, among others, created new conditions. World economic interdependence, international control of investment and exchange, and volume and mobility of capital increased at a time of rapid economic growth in some Third World countries, especially those whose governments took an aggressive role in promoting growth and investment. Some Third World cities now seem to be developing according to a more western model, but the same cannot be said of all Third World countries, and international economic evolution appears to have led to increasing polarization between countries as well as within them. The 1 domain where a certain convergence has occurred is consumption, beginning with the privileged classes and filtering to the lower income groups. Consumption of collective and individual consumer goods, which is concentrated in the largest cities, increases dependence on imports, technology, knowledge, and usually debt. The modern productive sector and its distribution activities become implanted in the cities to such a degree that it becomes more and more difficult for the consumption needs of regional cities and rural areas to be satisfied except through manufactured products from the capitalist sector of the principal city or through imports from industrial countries. Despite the fact that some Third World cities will be enormous by the year 2000 and that their social structures and labor forces will not closely resemble those of European cities, the thesis of "pseudourbanization" appears invalid for several reasons: the model of sectorial changes in the European labor force was not followed by the industrializing countries of North America; some Third World countries (excluding India and China) appear able to absorb most of their surplus rural population into the modern sector, and Third World cities appear less and less to be merely centers of culture. New research during the 1970s on Third World urbanization contributed several crucial elements to the analysis: recognition that insertion of developing countries into the international economic order has been a major influence on their urbanization patterns, appreciation of the role of migration in urbanization, realization of the potential role of the state in mitigating spatial and structural inequalities created by the urbanization process, and recognition of the need for more detailed microeconomic studies and construction of more elaborate models of Third World economies.
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  3. 3

    Income, aspirations, and fertility in rural areas of less developed countries

    Mueller E

    In: Rural development and human fertility, edited by Wayne A. Schutjer and C. Shannon Stokes. New York, N.Y., Macmillan, 1984. 121-50.

    This chapter examines the effect of changing income on fertility in rural areas, focusing particular attention on 2 variables which intervene between income and fertility: educational aspirations and consumption aspirations. The chapter's 1st part considers the income/fertility relation in rural areas of less developed countries. (LDCs). It appears that in rural areas at the micro level the effect of income on fertility is nonlinear: positive at low levels of income and negative at relatively high levels. The chapter's 2nd part deals with educational aspirations and the so-called quantity/quality tradeoff. The 3rd part of the chapter examines the hypothesis that a negative income/fertility relationship is more likely once a transformation of consumption aspirations has occurred. Some macrolevel evidence is considered along with microlevel studies. Review of the empirical evidence concerning the income/fertility relation in LDCs indicates that the relation is negative in urban areas and in rural areas where development is relatively advanced, but positive in rural areas at earlier stages of development. The pure positive income effect may be reinforced by indirect positive effects in poor rural populations. In such populations, income increases may lead to better health, nutrition, and higher survival rates among women of childbearing age. In addition, rising income may lead to more optimistic expectations concerning permanent income, and, in some countries, rural women may withdraw from the labor force or reduce work inputs when the farm earns more money. At later stages of rural development, negative indirect effects of increasing income on fertility may outweigh positive effects. Rising educational and consumption patterns are among these potential negative indirect effects, but there are others, particularly the anticipation of declining economic benefits from children. The observed income/fertility pattern suggests first that aspirations respond more strongly to income advances in urban than in rural settings and during later than during earlier phases of rural development. It also suggests that the sensitivity of fertility to rising aspirations may be quite low in traditional rural societies. This 2nd proposition derives support from an analysis of the quantity/quality tradeoff. The depressing effect of consumption aspirations on fertility seem to be modest, yet it appears that a policy of austerity with regard to new consumer goods may make it more difficult to lower birthrates. Investment aspirations have been neglected in the literature. A policy of creating conditions conducive to investment in nonhuman capital for a broad spectrum of rural household is desirable in its own right. If high investment aspirations also lowered birthrates, they would represent a doubly valuable policy goal.
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