Do the studies that link the education of women with a reduction in population growth specify the type of education? One poster has suggested it may simply be a matter of teaching women reliable methods of birth control. Another mentions literacy. Is it specifically literacy that has the desired effect, or is literacy just a readily available measure of something else, perhaps some broader education or perhaps varying types of education that share this one element? Does the education necessarily come first? Maybe its easier to provide an education for your kids when you've got fewer of them, making education an outgrowth of reduced fertility rates rather than the other way around. Maybe women go to school and take up the slack when there aren't enough educated men around to meet the need. Ajit says curing poverty reduces fertility rates. Why is that? I understand that there is a real correlation here, but I don't understand what it means. With more money I might have had a second child. I've heard that in poor countries people have children to support them in their old age or to help on the farm, but the contrary also seems reasonable. For example, someone argued in an article in The Economist that agricultural people only have more children when it is possible for them to bring more land under cultivation that way and thus expand as a family. If you own a fixed plot or no land at all, where is the motivation for a large family? And do parents really have children beyond their capacity to feed them in the hopes that they'll be supported themselves later? Why do Black, unmarried, poor and poorly educated women in the American underclass have more kids? To support them in their old age? To plow new land? Doesn't ring true. Ajit, might not educating women be one way of curing poverty? Are the two approaches contradictory? And on the subject of education as an exercise in power by whoever controls education -- hot subject for me. A thread here a while back was left dangling. If anyone wants to pick it up, I'm game. I'm trying to come to a personal understanding of why schools in the US are run by the government and whether this is a good thing. There's been a LOOOONG discussion on another list about values taught in public schools. Are they, should they be, who decides what values. A law professor has argued that first amendment rights to free speech should include belief formation and that it should therefore be unconstitutional for the government to promote values in government run schools. We've discussed the Amish being allowed by the Supreme Court to withdraw their kids from public schools, Christian fundamentalists taking over school boards, American Indians being put in boarding schools, sex education, home schooling, Herbert Gintis' voucher plan, commoditization of schooling by a free market, building community through schools, using schools to achieve racial integration and to cure poverty.... Any takers? Cindy Cotter [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
