*EVERYONE IS WELCOME TO JOIN THE SEMINAR*
Environmental Policy Roundtable: Fertility, Education, and Environmental Impact
Friday, October 8th
Room 1113
Van Munching Hall,
12:15 - 1:30pm
Laura Burt, an MPP student graduating in December with a concentration insustainable development will continue our discussion on population from lastweek with her paper on fertility and policy.
Abstract: While there are many good reasons to work towards extendingopportunities for formal schooling to more women in poor countries, this paperargues that lowering fertility rates is not among them. First, though there is anegative correlation between women’s levels of education and the number ofchildren they have, there is no compelling evidence of causality. Second, andmore important, this paper argues that fertility itself is not a policy-appropriatevariable. There is no evidence that high fertility in poor countries is a cause ofsocial or environmental problems or that lowering fertility would help solvethose problems. On the contrary, the focus in development discourse on highfertility in poor countries distracts from more pressing obstacles to sustainabledevelopment, particularly high levels of consumption in rich countries.
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