| n many developing nations, rapid population growth in rural areas contributes to declining per capita food availability, rural to urban migration pressure, employment problems, and pressure on the available social services. At the same time, little is known regarding the determinants of family size among farm families of the developing nations which could provide the basis for the design and implementation of effective population policies.;While in the traditional Chicago model, children are regularly viewed as some sort of durable good which provides only consumption utility, farm children can, in addition, provide farm labor and should hence be viewed as an important productive asset in farm activities. This aspect was taken into account by using an agricultural production function, which was used to formulate relationships between farm activities and the number of children. Accordingly, implications for the effect of farm size, prices, and noneconomic factors such as birth control, on birth rates were analytically derived.;One of the major concepts used in fertility models is the hypothesized tradeoff between the number and "quality" of children. This tradeoff stems from the fact that the birth of an additional child consists of costs which are a function of market prices for goods and services, and also entails an opportunity cost (e.g., mother's time) which could alternatively have been used to raise the child's quality or to increase resources parents devote to their own standard of living. This is, child quality is a matter of parental choice through the substitutability between the number of children and parents' standard of living.;The model hypothesizes that the opportunity cost of a household member is determined by the (shadow) price of its time. This is reflected by the labor supply of the family member, which in turn is a function of family resources. Thus, an econometric framework which determines simultaneously the optimal number and quality of children, the price of wife's time and her labor supply, was empirically tested.;Toward that end, the overall objective of the dissertation is to analyze the determinants of fertility among a sample of Thai rice farm families. Approaches to household reproduction behavior are reviewed and the evolution of consumer theory from the simple neoclassical model to the "New Approach" of consumer behavior is traced. On the basis of the review, a theoretical model that represents an elaboration of the Chicago model is developed. The model assumes that given lifetime resource constraints of time and income, a couple attempts to maximize the lifetime utility of the family by choosing optimal levels of fertility, child rearing activities, and standard of living.;The statistical results confirmed the basic hypotheses, indicating that farm families living in the Central Plain Region of Thailand significantly made a tradeoff between the quality (approximated by expected schooling) and the number of children they wished to have, and that increases in women's labor force participation was associated with smaller family size. It was also concluded that increases in income per capita (beyond an income level of 17,500 Bahts ((TURNEQ)... |
