Gender, Honor, and Aggregate Fertility

• Date: 01 September 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12159
• Author: Leslie Root,Jennifer Johnson‐Hanks†
• Published date: 01 September 2016

Gender, Honor, and Aggregate Fertility

By LESLIE ROOT* and JENNIFER JOHNSON-HANKS†

ABSTRACT. This article examines the tension between population-level

and individual-level interests regarding childbearing, from Malthus’s

concern for overpopulation to the contemporary issue of son preference,

and argues for an understanding of individual-level interests that

distinguishes parents from households. In making this distinction, we

draw attention to how gender norms can play an important role in

shaping reproductive interests. Survey data and previous work show a

wealth of differences in the number of children men and women would

like to have, and in their behaviors toward the children they have. We

argue not that gender norms cause women to want more children than

men, but that they cause women to want children more, for reasons that

include time spent with children, old-age support, women’s proscribed

opportunities for achieving social standing, and the relationship in many

contexts between honorable female adulthood and bearing children at the

right time and under the right circumstances. We further argue that a just

and effective population policy must consider fertility outcomes at

multiple scales, including that of the welfare of individual women.

Introduction

What are the causes of human population growth? Over the past 200

years, demographers have made considerable progress on this ques-

tion, demonstrating, for example, that growth rates are more sensitive

to changes in fertility than to changes in mortality (Coale 1972; Keyfitz

1975), and that transitions from higher to lower levels of fertility and

mortality entail a period of transitional population growth, in part

*Leslie Root: PhD student in demography at University o f California, Berkeley. Email:

leslier@demog.berkeley.edu.

†Jennifer Johnson-Hanks: Professor of Demography and Sociology at UC Berkeley. Her

researchfocuses on the relationships betweendemographic patternsand cultural practices

in Africa and the United States. Email: johnsonhanks@berke ley.edu.

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 75, No. 4 (September, 2016).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12159

V

C2016 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

because of the momentum built into population age structure (Keyfitz

1971; Blue and Espenshade 2011).

Commensurate with its importance for population growth, fertility

has been a major topic of population research. Over the last five deca-

des, demographers have amassed a rich empirical and conceptual liter-

ature on the drivers of fertility. In addition to political and economic

factors, a growing number of scholars have pointed to the importance

of gender relations and women’s roles in society. Examples include

Mason (1995) and Presser (2001). Discussions of broader fertility theory

are in Szreter (1993)and Mason (1991). In this brief article, we build on

the work of Mason, Presser, and others to argue that gender norms can

play an important role in shaping reproductive patterns.

The causes of fertility change are of such interest in part because the

potential consequences of population growth are so dramatic. At least

since Malthus, scholars have worried about the relationship between

production and reproduction. Concern that high fertility itself would

inhibit poor countries from growing economically dominated American

demography in the 1950s and 1960s.

1

Hardin (1968) and Ehrlich (1968)

popularized the idea that mass starvation would occur without extreme

measures to reduce fertility. Environmental degradation, food insecur-

ity, and political violence have all been attributed to high rates of popu-

lation growth, albeit sometimes on weak empirical grounds (see

discussions in Furedi 1997; Lomborg 2001).

Throughout this literature, the harms or merits of population growth

are often viewed at a continental or even global scale, as “what level of

population growth or fertility will lead to the best aggregateoutcomes?”

But fertility rates are the summing up of a large number of very perso-

nal events, the dynamics of which can be quite contrary to the dynam-

ics of aggregate outcomes. It is e ntirely possible to optimiz e fertility

rates to achieve good population-level outcomes and thereby wreck

havoc on individual-level well-being. While exclusive concern for

aggregate-level population outcomes is often called “neo-

Malthusianism,” Malthus was the first to lay out the problem of conflict-

ing individual- and aggregate-level interests. In this vein, the present

article will also argue that we must consider fertility outcomes at multi-

ple scales, including that of the welfare of individual women.

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