Public policy, risk and fertility in Bangladesh: A comment

In: The Bangladesh development studies: the journal of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Band 11, Heft 3, S. 39-58

Abstract

According to M. Cain and S. Lieberman (their views published in this journal), children represent for most poor, rural Bangladesh couples the only real way of attempting to insure against the risks and uncertainties inescapable in their harsh present and also future environment. The policy conclusion which is drawn from this is that a public sector programme to remove or at least reduce this economic uncertainty would have the important incidental effect of causing fertility to decline. Cain and Lieberman specifically propose an employment guarantee scheme. W. C. Robinson attempts to estimate how an "economic risk" reducing scheme might be implemented by the Bangladesh government, and how much it would cost. (DÜI-Sen)