The Effect of Labor-Saving Technology on Longitudinal Fertility Changes

In many subsistence communities worldwide, labor-saving technologies such as mechanized water pumps and grain mills are introduced during the first stages of economic acculturation. These technological changes affect the efficiency with which resources are acquired and processed. If women can produce the same amount of a good in less time and if the time savings is reallocated to less energetically costly activities, the positive shift in women’s energy balance can affect fertility in a number of ways. Reproductive histories collected over the past ten years show that since the introduction of laborsaving technology Xculoc Maya women begin childbearing at a significantly younger age and have a greater annual probability of giving birth and higher age-specific and completed fertility. Access to wage labor, education, and the market economy remains limited. When a change in labor efficiency takes place under these conditions, parents appear to reallocate the saved time to reproduction rather to production. Such conditions may have significant implications for the rapid population growth occurring in many small-scale societies during the early stage of economic acculturation.