Environmental Degradation and the Demand for Children: Searching for the Vicious Circle

We explore the hypothesis that because of their important role in collection activities related to environmental goods (firewood, water, grazing) the demand for children may increase with local resource depletion, setting up a vicious circle interaction between resource depletion and population growth. Using a large scale household data set from Pakistan with detailed information on female, child and adult time allocation, firewood use and collection activities, and fertility we establish four findings. First, collection activities absorb a substantial part of total household resources. Firewood consumption, valued by collection time accounts for 6.2 percent of household expenditure. Second, children are relatively devoted to collection activities, which absorb a quarter of their time. Third, women benefit from the presence of older children in the household, working 2.6 hours a week less in household activities for each child aged 10 to 15, and 3.2 hours less for each child over 15. Finally, firewood availability does seem to be related to fertility. Even after controlling for other determinants of fertility in reduced form regressions we show that households living in areas in which the distance from firewood is greater have more children, while household living in areas in which firewood is more expensive have fewer children. We would like to thank Kenneth Chomitz, Lawrence Goulder, the seminar participants of th e 1 Environmental Policy Forum at Stanfor d University and the Advisory Committee for the research project, “Social and Environmental Conseq uences of Growth-Oriented Economic Policies” for helpful comments. We would like to gratefully acknowledge funding from the research project. This proposition is not at as obvious as it may seem: some elements of the natural resource base , 2 particularly the soils, may be under a regime of proper ty rights such that an increase in population density, given the right policy, leads to higher prices and inc reased investments such that soil quality increases with greater population density. A recent study of the Machakos distric t of Kenya from 1930 to 1990 shows that a five-fold increase in population lead to no degradation (and possibly improvement) of soil quality, a s farmers invested in terracing and o ther agricultural improvements (English, Tiffen and Mortimore, 1994). 1 May 17, 1996 Environmental Degradation and the Demand for Children: Searching for the Vicious Circle 1 As environmental degradation and population growth have come to the fore of the development agenda, so too have beliefs and theories that suggest that problems of poverty, population, and the environment are inter-linked. In particular, some have proposed that environmental degradation and population growth may exacerbate one another in a vicious circle in which greater population leads to a worsening environment and a worsening environment leads to more rapid population growth (Dasgupta, 1995, Cleaver and Schreiber, 1995). One half of the vicious circle may seem obvious, that greater population in a given area leads to pressures on, and ultimately degradation of, the natural resource base: soil quality, water, grazing areas, wood availability . 2 The explanation of the second half to the vicious circle, that greater environmental degradation leads to increased population growth, is less straightforward. Most conventional theories suggest that greater natural resource scarcity should lead to a lower demand for children