There is a very large but scattered literature debating the economic implications of high fertility. This paper reviews the literature on three themes: (a) Does high fertility affect low-income countries' prospects for economic growth and poverty reduction? (b) Does population growth exacerbate...

Fertility decline has fueled a sharp increase in the proportion of 'missing girls' in China, so an increasing share of males will fail to marry, and will face old age without the support normally provided by wives and children. This paper shows that historically, China has had nearly-universal...

The apparently inexorable rise in the proportion of "missing girls" in much of East and South Asia has attracted much attention amongst researchers and policy-makers. An encouraging trend was suggested by the case of South Korea, where child sex ratios were the highest in Asia but peaked in the...

Aid to developing countries has largely neglected the population-wide health services that are core to communicable disease control in the developed world. These mostly non-clinical services generate "pure public goods" by reducing everyone's exposure to disease through measures such as...

Public health systems in India have weakened since the 1950s, after central decisions to amalgamate the medical and public health services, and to focus public health work largely on single-issue programs - instead of on strengthening public health systems broad capacity to reduce exposure to...

The central government s policies, though well-intentioned, have inadvertently de-emphasized environmental health and other preventive public health services in India since the 1950s, when it was decided to amalgamate the medical and public health services and to focus public health services...

Son preference is known to be found in certain types of cultures, that is patrilineal cultures. But what explains the fact that China, South Korea, and Northwest India manifest such extreme child sex ratios compared with other patrilineal societies? This paper argues that what makes these...