14. How Larger, Poor Families Adversely Affect Education Opportunities of Each Child—Or Not

A theory suggests that the resources countries have are more or less fixed, so therefore population growth makes them poorer. However, technological progress, which did not figure in this theory, makes resources appear. Therefore, population growth ends up increasing the likelihood of technological breakthroughs rather than having adverse effects.

Also, countries that are poor today are not poor just because of high fertility or rapid increase in population growth. It may be vice versa—poverty causes high fertility.

To address this issue, we must take a step back. We must take this large issue aside and focus on taking approaches step-by-step—and this requires us to observe the family and answer the question of whether large families get poorer solely because they are large.

Does an increase in family size lead to reduced investment in children’s human capital?

Gary Becker, a Nobel Prize-winner in economics, argued families are a “quality-quantity trade-off.” A trade-off is when you have to give up something for something else. Essentially, one cannot achieve both ideal situations. In this case, the two situations are “quality” and “quantity.” When there are more children, each of them will be of lower “quality” due to the limited amount of resources (e.g. food and education) that have to be allocated.

On the other hand, a parent can choose to prioritize the “quality” of the most gifted of their children instead of giving chances for all of them. This causes some children to be “entirely denied their life chances.” Relating back to the idea I touched about a few blogs ago, not all talented children get the resources needed to develop their passions and achieve their dreams. But does this happen to children who grow up in large families in all cases? Do each of them receive less education just because they are born into large families? The book suggests another reason might be that the families with many children just don’t value education that much.

A study showed no evidence that children born in smaller families are more educated.

A situation is when a family ends up with more children than it expected. Families are likely to have an additional child if they have not yet had a boy, especially in developing countries. Another study also found that large family size has no adverse effects on the education of the children after all.

Although China has had the one-child policy, some areas allowed a family whose first child was a girl to have a second child, and this caused the girls to receive more education, not less. These studies and findings suggest that the quality-quantity

relationship is not well supported, and family size does not play a role, or adversely affect children.

Earlier we touched upon the distribution of resources that must be shared among people—this suggests that some of them should end up with less, so if the children don’t, it must be the mother. Oftentimes, getting pregnant or married too early results in their dropping out of school. This brings us to the next question that we will continue to explore next time: how families make fertility decisions and how much control women have over these decisions.