This should have been expected. Economic demography can be a most frustrating subject. Itwould seemthat for any theoretical inference, nomatter howinnocuous, there is some set of data from some part of the world over some period that is not consonant with it. 23 Over 40 years of demographic research have uncovered that the factors underlying fertility behaviour include not only the techniques that are available to households for controlling their size, but also the household demand for children. The latter in particular is influenced by a number of factors (., child mortality rates, level of education of the parents, rules of inheritance) whose relative strengths would be expected to.
