by Sen, Amartya
15. The 1991 Indian census indicates that the death rate per thousand in the 0–4 age group was 25.6 for males and 27.5 for females at the all-India level. The female mortality rate in that age group was lower than the male mortality rate in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, but higher in all the other major Indian states. The female disadvantage was most pronounced in Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
16. Murthi, Guio and Drèze, “Mortality, Fertility and Gender Bias in India” (1995).
17. See Jean Drèze and Mamta Murthi, “Female Literacy and Fertility: Recent Census Evidence from India,” mimeographed, Centre for History and Economics, King’s College, Cambridge, U.K., 1999.
18. There were, apparently, not enough data with adequate interdistrict variations to examine the impact of different forms of property rights, which are relatively more uniform across India. On an isolated basis, there is, of course, the strong and much-discussed example of the Nairs in Kerala, who have had matrilineal inheritance for a long time (an association that confirms, rather than contradicts, insofar as it goes, the positive impact of female property rights on child survival in general and the survival of female children in particular).
19. There is, it appears, a positive association between female labor force participation and under-five mortality in these fits, but this association is not statistically significant.
20. See, among other important contributions, J. C. Caldwell, “Routes to Low Mortality in Poor Countries,” Population and Development Review 12 (1986); and Behrman and Wolfe, “How Does Mother’s Schooling Affect Family Health, Nutrition, Medical Care Usage and Household Sanitation?” (1987).
21. These have been extensively discussed in my joint book with Jean Drèze, India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity (1995).
22. The various sources of evidence on this have been subjected to critical examination, and not surprisingly, the different empirical studies emerge with rather disparate force in these critical scrutinies. See particularly the “critical perspectives” on this issue presented in Caroline H. Bledsoe, John B. Casterline, Jennifer A. Johnson-Kuhn and John G. Haaga, eds., Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1999). See also Susan Greenhalgh, Situating Fertility: Anthropology and Demographic Inquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Robert J. Barro and Jong-Wha Lee, “International Comparisons of Educational Attainment,” paper presented at a conference on How Do National Policies Affect Long-Run Growth?, World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1993; Robert Cassen, with contributors, Population and Development: Old Debates, New Conclusions (Washington, D.C.: Transaction Books for Overseas Development Council, 1994).
23. On these and related general issues, see my “Population: Delusion and Reality,” New York Review of Books, September 22, 1994; Population Policy: Authoritarianism versus Cooperation (Chicago: MacArthur Foundation, 1995); and “Fertility and Coercion,” University of Chicago Law Review 63 (summer 1996).
24. See United Nations, ESCAP, Integration of Women’s Concerns into Development Planning in Asia and the Pacific (New York: United Nations, 1992), especially the paper of Rehman Sobhan and the references cited there. The practical issues relate closely to the social conception of women’s role in society and thus touch on the central focus of feminist studies. A wide-ranging collection of papers (including many classics) can be found in Susan Moller Okin and Jane Mansbridge, eds., Feminism (Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 1994). See also Catherine A. Mackinnon, Feminism Unmodified (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), and Barbara Johnson, The Feminist Difference: Literature, Psychology, Race and Gender (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).
25. See Philip Oldenberg, “Sex Ratio, Son Preference and Violence in India: A Research Note,” Economic and Political Weekly, December 5–12, 1998; Jean Drèze and Reetika Khera, “Crime, Society and Gender in India: Some Clues for Homicidal Data,” mimeographed, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics, 1999. The explanations of this interesting finding can invoke cultural factors as well as economic and social ones. Though the brief discussion here concentrates on the latter, there are obvious connections with psychological and valuational questions raised by those who see a basic gender contrast in morals and attitudes, most notably Carol Gilligan; see In a Different Voice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982). Importance may well be attached to the fact that the most remarkable case of humane prison reform in India came from one of that rare breed, a woman prison governor, Kiran Bedi. Her own account of the radical change and the opposition she faced can be found in Kiran Bedi, It’s Always Possible: Transforming One of the Largest Prisons in the World (New Delhi: Sterling, 1998). I do not pursue further here the important issue of distinguishing between alternative explanations of the nature of women’s leadership in social change of this type, since the analysis presented in this work does not require that we try to resolve this complex issue.
26. Oldenberg argues for the former hypothesis; but see also Arup Mitra, “Sex Ratio and Violence: Spurious Results,” Economic and Political Weekly, January 2–9, 1993. Drèze and Khera argue for an explanation with the opposite direction of causation. See also the literature cited there, including older studies, such as Baldev Raj Nayar, Violence and Crime in India: A Quantitative Study (Delhi: Macmillan, 1975); S. M. Edwards, Crime in India (Jaipur: Printwell Publishers, 1988); S. Venugopal Rao, ed., Perspectives in Criminology (Delhi: Vikas, 1988).
27. Another factor has been the use of group responsibility in seeking a high rate of repayment. On this see Muhammad Yunus with Alan Jolis, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty (London: Aurum Press, 1998). See also Lutfun N. Khan Osmani, “Credit and Women’s Relative Well-Being: A Case Study of the Grameen Bank, Bangladesh” (Ph.D. thesis, Queen’s University of Belfast, 1998). See also Kaushik Basu, Analytical Development Economics (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997), chapters 13 and 14; Debraj Ray, Development Economics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), chapter 14.
28. See Catherine H. Lovell, Breaking the Cycle of Poverty: The BRAC Strategy (Hartford, Conn.: Kumarian Press, 1992).
29. See John C. Caldwell, Barkat-e-Khuda, Bruce Caldwell, Indrani Pieries and Pat Caldwell, “The Bangladesh Fertility Decline: An Interpretation,” Population and Development Review 25 (1999). See also John Cleland, James F. Phillips, Sajeda Amin and G. M. Kamal, The Determinants of Reproductive Change in Bangladesh: Success in a Challenging Environment (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1996), and John Bongaarts, “The Role of Family Planning Programmes in Contemporary Fertility Transition,” in The Continuing Demographic Transition, edited by G.W. Jones et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
30. See Agarwal, A Field of One’s Own (1995).
31. See Henrietta Moore and Megan Vaughan, Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890–1990 (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1994).
32. The difficulties to be overcome by women in the labor market and in economic relations in society have been plentiful even in advanced market economies. See Barbara Bergmann, The Economic Emergence of Women (New York: Basic Books, 1986); Francine D. Blau and Marianne A. Ferber, The Economics of Women, Men and Work (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1986); Victor R. Fuchs, Women’s Quest for Economic Equality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988); Claudia Goldin, Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). See also the collection of papers in Marianne A. Ferber, Women in the Labor Market (Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 1998).
33. There is a danger of oversimplification in seeing the issue of women’s “agency” or “autonomy” in too formulaic terms, focusing on simple statistical connections with variables such as female literacy or employment. On this see the insightful anthropological analysis of Alaka M. Basu, Cu
lture, Status of Women, and Demographic Behavior (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). See also the studies presented in Roger Jeffery and Alaka M. Basu, eds., Girls’ Schooling, Women’s Autonomy and Fertility Change in South Asia (London: Sage, 1996).
34. See Naila Kabeer, “The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labour Market Decisions in London and Dhaka,” mimeographed, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 1998.
35. The changing role of women (and its far-reaching effects) in India since independence is discussed in an interesting collection of papers edited by Bharati Ray and Aparna Basu, From Independence towards Freedom (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).
36. UNDP’s Human Development Report 1995 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) presents an intercountry investigation of gender differences in social, political and business leadership, in addition to reporting on gender inequality in terms of more conventional indicators. See also the literature cited there.
Chapter 9: Population, Food and Freedom
1. Thomas Robert Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population, As It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculation of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers (London: J. Johnson, 1798), chapter 8; in the Penguin Classics edition, An Essay on the Principle of Population; and, A Summary View of the Principle of Population, edited by Anthony Flew (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 123. See also The Works of Thomas Robert Malthus, edited by E. A. Wrigley and David Souden (London: William Pickering, 1986), including the illuminating editorial introduction.
2. See Commodity Market Review 1998–1999 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1999), p. xii. See also the detailed analysis presented in that report, and also Global Commodity Markets: A Comprehensive Review and Price Forecast (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1999). In an impressive technical study of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), it is argued that there might be very significant further decline in real world prices of food between 1990 and 2020. The study anticipates further declines in food prices of about 15 percent for wheat, 22 percent for rice, 23 percent for maize, and 25 percent for other coarse grains. See Mark W. Rosengrant, Mercedita Agcaoili-Sombilla and Nicostrato D. Perez, “Global Food Projections to 2020: Implications for Investment,” International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, D.C., 1995.
3. See Tim Dyson, Population and Food: Global Trends and Future Prospects (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), table 4.6.
4. Dyson, Population and Food (1996), table 4.5.
5. In this see my Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), chapter 6.
6. Note by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to the Preparatory Committee for the International Conference on Population and Development, third session, A/Conf.171/PC/5, February 18, 1994, p. 30. See also Massimo Livi Bacci, A Concise History of World Population, translated by Carl Ipsen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992; 2nd edition, 1997).
7. The arguments that follow draw on my earlier papers on the population problem, and in particular on “Fertility and Coercion,” University of Chicago Law Review 63 (summer 1996).
8. See my “Rights and Agency,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 11 (1982), reprinted in Consequentialism and Its Critics, edited by S. Scheffler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), and “Rights as Goals,” in Equality and Discrimination: Essays in Freedom and Justice, edited by S. Guest and A. Milne (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1985).
9. See my “Rights and Agency” (1982); “Rights as Goals” (1985); On Ethics and Economics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).
10. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty; in J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, On Liberty; Considerations on Representative Government; Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy (London: Dent; Rutland, Vt.: Everyman Library, 1993), p. 140.
11. I have argued elsewhere that this conflict is so pervasive that even a minimal acknowledgment of the priority of liberty can conflict with the most minimal utility-based social principle, viz., Pareto optimality. On this see my “The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal,” Journal of Political Economy 78 (January/February 1971), reprinted in my Choice, Welfare and Measurement (Oxford: Blackwell; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982; republished, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), and also in, among other collections, Philosophy and Economic Theory, edited by Frank Hahn and Martin Hollis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). See also my Collective Choice and Social Welfare (San Francisco: Holden-Day, 1970; republished, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1979), “Liberty and Social Choice,” Journal of Philosophy 80 (January 1983), and “Minimal Liberty,” Economica 57 (1992). See the symposium on this subject in the special number devoted to it in Analyse & Kritik 18 (1996), among quite a large literature that has addressed this question.
12. See Massimo Livi Bacci and Gustavo De Santis, eds., Population and Poverty in the Developing World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999). See also Partha Dasgupta, An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); Robert Cassen et al., Population and Development: Old Debates, New Conclusions (Washington D.C.: Transaction Books in Overseas Development Council, 1994); Kerstin Lindahl-Kiessling and Hans Landberg, eds., Population, Economic Development, and the Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), among other contributions.
13. English translation by Malthus himself, from his Essay on population, chapter 8, Penguin Classics, p. 123. Malthus uses here the original 1795 version of Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet’s Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain. For later reprints of that volume, see Oeuvres de Condorcet, volume 6 (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1847; recently republished, Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1968). The passage here is on pages–7 of the 1968 reprint.
14. Condorcet, Esquisse; in the translation by June Barraclough, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1955), pp. 188–9.
15. Malthus, A Summary View of the Principle of Population (London: John Murray, 1830); in the Penguin Classics edition (1982), p. 243. Even though Malthus remained rather obtuse on the role of reason (in contrast to economic compulsion) in reducing fertility rates, he did provide a remarkably enlightening analysis of the role of food markets in the determination of food consumption of different classes and occupation groups. See his An Investigation of the Cause of the Present High Price of Provisions (London: 1800), and the discussions of the lessons to be learned from Malthus’s analysis in my Poverty and Famines (1981), appendix B, and in E. A. Wrigley, “Corn and Crisis: Malthus on the High Price of Provisions,” Population and Development Review 25 (1999).
16. Malthus, A Summary View of the Principle of Population (1982 edition), p. 243; emphasis added. Skepticism about the family’s ability to make sensible decisions led Malthus to oppose the public relief of poverty, including the English Poor Laws.
17. On this see J. C. Caldwell, Theory of Fertility Decline (New York: Academic Press, 1982); R. A. Easterlin, ed., Population and Economic Change in Developing Countries (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980); T. P. Schultz, Economics of Population (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1981); Cassen et al., Population and Development: (1994). See also Anrudh K. Jain and Moni Nag, “The Importance of Female Primary Education in India,” Economic and Political Weekly 21 (1986).
18. Gary S. Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), and A Treatise on the Family (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981). See also the paper of Robert Willis, “Economic Analysis of Fertility: Micro Foundations and Aggregate Implications,” in Lindahl-Kiessling and Landberg, Population, Economic Development, and the Environment (1994).
19. On this see Nancy Birdsall, “Government, Population, and Poverty: A ‘Win-Win’ Tale,” in Lindahl-Kiessling and Landberg, Population, Economic Development, and the Environment (1994). Also see her “Economic Approaches to Population Gr
owth,” in The Handbook of Development Economics, volume 1, edited by H. B. Chenery and T. N. Srinivasan (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1988).
20. On this see John Bongaarts, “The Role of Family Planning Programmes in Contemporary Fertility Transitions,” in The Continuing Demographic Transition, edited by Gavin W. Jones et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); “Trends in Unwanted Childbearing in the Developing World,” Studies in Family Planning 28 (December 1997); and also the literature cited there. See also Geoffrey McNicoll and Mead Cain, eds., Rural Development and Population: Institutions and Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
21. See World Bank, World Development Report 1998–1999 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1998), table 7, p. 202. See also World Bank and Population Reference Bureau, Success in a Challenging Environment: Fertility Decline in Bangladesh (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1993).
22. See, for example, R. A. Easterlin, ed., Population and Economic Change in Developing Countries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); T. P. Schultz, Economics of Population (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1981); J. C. Caldwell, Theory of Fertility Decline (1982); Nancy Birdsall, “Economic Approaches to Population Growth,” in The Handbook of Development Economics, volume 1, edited by H. B. Chenery and T. N. Srinivasan (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1988); Robert J. Barro and Jong-Wha Lee, “International Comparisons of Educational Attainment,” paper presented at a conference on “How Do National Policies Affect Long-Run Growth?” World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1993; Partha Dasgupta, An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution (1993); Robert Cassen et al., Population and Development (1994); Gita Sen, Adrienne Germain and Lincoln Chen, eds., Population Policies Reconsidered: Health, Empowerment, and Rights (Harvard Center for Population and Development/International Women’s Health Coalition, 1994). See also the papers of Nancy Birdsall and Robert Willis, in Lindahl-Kiessling and Landberg, Population, Economic Development, and the Environment (1994).