Micro-économie de la fécondité : quelques reflexions à partir du cas indien

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Guilmoto, Christophe Z.
Copyright Year	1996
Abstract	This paper examines the contribution of microeconomic theories to the understanding of social and geographical dimensions of fertility transition in India. In a first part, we present an overview of the two commonest theoretical formulations of the economie approach of fertility. According to the first theory, changes in reproductive behaviour are mainly to be regarded as the responses of households to exogenous changes and to their impact on the relative value and cost of children. The trade-off between quantity and quality of children is then an essential element to understand fertility decline. According to the second model, exogenous changes may also alter the system of norms and preferences which is otherwise assumed to invariable in standard economic theory. The usefulness of these analytieal frameworks is then examined in the light of the Indian experience where fertility behaviour is extremely heterogeneous between groups and regions. It is shown that economic explanations per se seem to be far less important than cultural and social dimensions. The specificity of sorne regional features (read local cultural traits) persists even when a large number of explanatory variables is used. However, a broader economic framework taking into account the endogenous character of local institutions may be able to reconcile social and economic perspectives on fertility.
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/doc34-06/010010581.pdf
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article