Mead Cain, Syeda Rokeya Khanam, Shamsun Nahar
Mead Cain
From the perspective of parents in many parts of the developing world, high fertility and large numbers of surviving children may be economically rational propositions. An important consideration with respect to the micro implications of high fertility is the economic roles and productive contributi...
Mead Cain
Relative to other approaches and emphases -- the value of childrens labor for example -- the potential importance of environmentally and socially determined risk as a source of derived demand for children in poor agrarian settings has been largely overlooked. Using frequency of distress sale of land...
Mead Cain
In rural Bangladesh domestic organization is patriarchal ownership of land is concentrated among men and inheritance customs and laws favor sons. Sons establish their new households soon after marriage usually about 28 and they then assume independent authority while usually being given right to a p...
Mead Cain
This paper examines the proposition that the economic mobility of persons in rural South Asia is affected by their reproductive outcomes: specifically, that reproductive failure (defined as the failure to rear a surviving son) entails material loss. Underlying this proposition is the notion that son...
John Bongaarts, Mead Cain
It is helpful in considering the demographic effects of famine to distinguish between short- and long-term responses. Short-term responses are primarily mediated through biological process and the long-term responses involve behavioral adjustments to the crisis. A hypothetical famine of half-year du...
Mead Cain
Abstract Despite a mounting interest in the elderly, and a rapidly expanding literature on the subject, there is a dearth of empirical research that can shed light on their condition. For Bangladesh and the rest of South Asia, the record is very thin. With the aid of observed and retrospective data ...
Rachel Sullivan Robinson, Ronald Lee, Karen L. Kramer
The economic contribution of children to their parents' households has long interested demographers because of its potential to influence fertility levels. Valuing children's labour in pre-industrial economies, however, is inherently difficult. The same is true of women's labour, a crucial component...
Mead Cain, Maithreyi Krishnaraj, Karuna Chanana
Preface - Leela Dube PART ONE: THE CULTURAL MATRIX Introduction - Maithreyi Krishnaraj Differential Socialisation of Boys and Girls in Some Lower Castes or Communities of Ahmedabad - Usha Knahere Gender Creation from Birth to Adolescence in Rural Bangladesh - K M A Aziz Seclusion of Women and the St...
Mead Cain
Brief account of the effects of a countrywide drought on a village in Mymensingh District, Bangladesh, where the author did extensive fieldwork. The link between economic risk and reproductive behavior is discussed in this context, and some difficulties encountered in implementing the national famil...
Mead Cain
Ismail Sirageldin, Monowar Hossain, Mead Cain
The year 1971 saw the emergence of Bangladesh as the eighth most populous nation on earth, a country combining extreme poverty with high density. One of the main challenges that feces this new nation in its quest for social development is the challenge of controlling its rate of population growth. W...
Sajeda Amin, Mead Cain
Abstract This paper explores the origins and timing of the reported emergence of dowry payment and the extent of its practice in rural Bangladesh. The increasing incidence of dowry, and a shift from a norm of brideprice to dowry over a time span of less than one generation, represents a dramatic cha...
Mead Cain
This paper is a reply to a critique of a previous article by Mead Cain on the effects on fertility of economic risk such as is experienced in poor countries. The critique appears in the same issue as this reply. Fertility does not vary systematically because of the security motive in an area as poor...
Mead Cain
progress lies in simply adding more variables to a regression equation or shifting statistical analysis to a higher level of aggregation. What I did mean, and this should be clear from a reading of the paper, is that before one seriously entertains the land-labour demand or land-security hypotheses,...