This chapter studies the interface in poor countries of population growth, rural poverty, and deterioration of the local natural-resource base, a subject that has been much neglected by modern demographers and development economists. The motivations for procreation in rural communities of the...

The chapter discusses the environment and emerging development issues and provides an account of a central aspect of the lives of the rural poor in poor countries based on a wide-ranging analytical and empirical literature that has developed quite independently of the subject of development...