El encadenamiento de las generaciones y la historicidad del hogar

Leibenstein (1972:458) is of the opinion that sociologists or demographers lack theories for the study of fertility. He argued that sociologist-demographers took the bits and pieces of knowledge in their stride, but economists would have found these bits and pieces aesthetically unfulfilling. Further, he suggested that the reasons for the fall of fertility listed by demographers were very partial and a plausible argument could be developed about how these elements contributed towards reducing desired or actual fertility or both. At the same time, he accepts the fact that a narrowly constructed, strictly economic approach is unlikely to be successful.

He argues that part of the change in fertility is accounted for by the direct choices of the population in the process of determining the number of children they desire. These in turn depend on an assessment of the benefits, in terms of utility and/ or satisfaction, broadly defined, and costs, also in turns of utility and/ or satisfaction, that are attributed to children during significant marginal controllable situations.

Leibenstein (1975:1-31) has recently propounded a new explanation of the decline in fertility accompanied by economic development. His recent explanation takes account of his own previous theory of fertility (1957); in addition, it incorporates a criticism voiced on the quality of children, and a new theory of consumption based on social status considerations that are critical to the explanation of the utility cost of children. In an attempt to expand his recent theory, he suggested that direct and indirect costs of children were

not sufficient to explain the entire decision process which determines the observed inverse relation between family size and income level.

In his approach, emphasis has been placed on two aspects of the process of urbanization and occupation shift: (1) the shift of greater proportions of the population into higher socio-economic status than would have been the case had the country remained at its lower income level; and (2) the simultaneous growth of per capita income. These factors influence the utility attached to children and the utility of the typical expenditure patterns of households which in turn determine the utility costs associated with children.

On the assumption that income distribution remains unchanged in the long run, a relative income compression effect will operate as development occurs on the basis of the following reasonable hypotheses (Leibenstein,1975:6):

(1) Families have a strong desire to avoid a fall in status; (2) Some families will want to emulate those in higher statuses for themselves or for their children; (3) Services are disproportionately involved in 'status goods' ; and (4) Families try to maintain a strong status differential through their expenditure patterns.

When a significant portion of income is needed to meet the requirement for status goods, such a requirement is met at the expense of non-status goods which include children. An increase in expenditure occurs due to a movement from lower to higher status. At the same time, expenditure on services like educational cost of children will also rise. As a result, there may be a possibility of fall in status, but fall in status does not cause a decrease in expenditure, because people do not like to acknowledge a fall in

status. It is argued that there is a utility cost of children that is associated with each status.

Combining a utility function with the utility cost, the household will have an incentive to have the i-th child as long as the utility of the i-th child (Ui) is greater than the utility cost of the child (Uci) when the utility cost functions include status (IMU- increasing marginal utility) goods. Leibenstein argued that there is a 'switch point' income level, up to which the household favours an i-th child (Ui > Uci). After this income level (Uci > Ui) the household will be against having the i-th child. Thus, the utility of higher parity children declines as the status-IMU goods become relatively important.

Jones (1977:24) questioned whether Leibenstein had perhaps exaggerated the importance of status considerations in people's preference functions and childbearing decisions and whether there was any way to test empirically the validity of the theory. He suggested that there might be a benefit in combining this approach and the demand theory.

The 'new household economics' or 'demand theory' is basically the product of research that has been carried out by Becker (1960 and 1965) and elaborated on by many other economists. This theory treats the desire for children as equivalent to the demand for consumer goods such as cars, houses, and refrigerators. Becker argues that children are not inferior goods; therefore, there is a positive relation between income and a desired number of children. Children like other commodities provide utility to consumers. The reasoning behind this is that there is a satisfaction in owning commodities. He assumes that the utility of children is not constant, but depends on their

quality. High-quality children have high utility but they also cost more. The type of utility function operating under such conditions is determined by 'tastes' which are, in turn, determined by various background factors such as culture or religion. In order to afford higher quality children, higher income families wanted to 'buy' fewer children. The reason parents demand fewer children as income rises is that the price effect (the much higher cost per high-quality child) outweighs the income effect (wanting more children because income has risen).

Becker has also considered 'uncertainties' of production and 'birth control' factors in his model. He argues that the 'uncertainty' factor will take account of such aspects as that producers (parents) cannot control sex and physical characteristics of the next child. Introducing a contraception factor, he argued that the relation between actual fertility and income would equal that between desired fertility and income if knowledge of contraception techniques did not vary with income.

Becker's theory was criticized by both sociologists and economists. Judith Blake (1968:1-25) challenged the entire theory on the grounds that children could not be treated as consumer durables. Before attempting to re-examine the relevance of Becker's framework, she evaluated Becker's assumption of a positive relationship between income and desired family size. Her conclusion was

...the data on income and family size presented by Becker turn out to be either biased in favour of his thesis through sampling distortion, or irrelevant by virtue of being cases in which children had the status of being production goods rather than simply consumer goods.(Blake,1968:11).

Blake also reviewed Becker's framework and criticized him for disregarding well-known sociological determinants of reproductive motivation. She pointed out four such features: (1) the analogy of children with consumer durables; (2) the concentration on the 'consuming' as against the 'producing' role of parents with respect to children; (3) the misapprehension of child cost; and (4) the failure to analyse the utilities involved in having children.

^ith regard to the first, she held the view that there is no direct control over children as there can be over the acquisition of cars, refrigerators and houses. Freedom to choose the number of children extends beyond the control of the individual as there is no flexibility in the consumption of children so as to maximize their utility as is the case with other commodities(1968:17):

If the parents miscalculate and find that the marginal utility they actually derive from an additional child is less than they would have had from an expenditure on something else, they cannot, normally, adjust the situation.

Unlike with other commodities, parents are not allowed to treat children as they wish but are bound by many conditions and restrictions.

The second feature concerns the production of a socialized child which is the product of the interaction of children with one another. Though siblings are not necessarily important for such interaction, substitution of non— siblings can be difficult due to the isolation of the nuclear family. in addition, parents are bound to follow societal norms to produce a minimum level of quality by, for instance, providing education, health care, and so on.

The third feature has to do with direct and indirect costs relating to children. Blake pointed out that Becker ignored indirect costs or opportunity costs, i.e. alternative utilities on which parents could expend their resources. Direct costs, i.e. the resources actually expended on childbearing and rearing were considered. Blake criticized Becker for overlooking two points with respect to direct costs: (1) parents might find it difficult to separate clearly the level of living of their children from their own, and (2) the way of life at a given social level might put its mark on standard of child quality as well.

The fourth feature concerns the following two assumptions regarding the utility of children vbich Becker applied in his theory: (1) there is no family—size threshold below viiich even poor couples wi-^-h strongly resist falling; and (2) there are no systematic social class differences in the relative utilities or taste for children which limit the family—size desires of the well-to-do. Blake rejected these two assumptions on the ground that familial institutions motivate almost everyone to have some children and non-familial institutions create a sense of disutility in large families, in particular among the affluent ones.

A further complication was introduced by Easterlin(1969:129), who argued that observed income at one point in time might not be a valid relevant concept but one needs to consider potential income flow through time.

Namboodiri (1972:185-206) attempted to modify the model taking most of the above criticisms into account to make it more widely applicable in fertility research and theory building. He demonstrated

that it was necessary to conceptualize interrelationships among the utilities of children of different birth orders, as decisions about having children were probably sequentially made.

Jones (1977:14) recognized the fact that treatment of mother's time is a positive contribution by the theory of 'new household economics', but argued that it failed to develop a proper classification. The microeconomic theories of fertility have a drawback in the sense that they are not able to be tested empirically due to lack of adequate data. Jones (1977:18) examined the household model and pointed out five reasons why the household model is not 'at home' in low-income countries:

1. child-care assistance with an almost zero opportunity