The economics of population and food supplies
Citation: Notestein, F. W. (1953) The economics of population and food supplies. Eighth International Conference of Agricultural Economics (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): The economics of population and food supplies
Tagged: uw-madison (RSS), wisconsin (RSS), sociology (RSS), demography (RSS), prelim (RSS), qual (RSS), WisconsinDemographyPrelimAugust2009 (RSS), agricultural economics (RSS)
Summary
First of all, it must be recognized that Europe's population growth during the past 3 centuries was unique in the world's history. The major source of this increase was a reduction of mortality. Meanwhile, birth-rates remained generally unchanged until the last quarter of the 19th century.
Peasant societies in Europe, and almost universally throughout the world, are organized in ways that bring strong pressures on their members to reproduce economic organization, high mortality, little education, few opportunities for women. The new ideal of the small family arose typically in the urban industrial society. Urban life stripped the family of many functions in production, consumption, recreation, and education factory employment, education, lower mortality, new economic independence of women. Under these multiple pressures, old ideals and beliefs began to weaken, and the new ideal of a small # of children gained strength. A trend toward birth restriction started in the urban upper classes and gradually moved down the social scale and out to the countryside.
The small family ideal and strong motivation for the reduction of births have arise in a variety of conditions. Some important factors are: growing importance of the individual rather than the family, and particularly the extended family group; the development of a rational and secular point of view; the growing awareness of the world and modern techniques through popular education; improved health; and the appearance of alternatives to early marriage and childbearing as means of livelihood and prestige for women. **The societies that developed the technology which produced the declines in mortality were ultimately transformed by the very requirements of that technology in ways that brought forward the small family ideal and the practice of birth restriction.
