More poor children: Less Rich ones

" Demographics are studies of a population based on factors such as age, race, sex, economic status, level of education, income level and employment, among others. Demographics are used by governments, corporations and non-government organizations to learn more about a population's characteristics for many purposes, including policy development and economic market research.- Investopedia" 

Last week was a history lesson and this week is another one. many times history is important in order to understand current trends. 

In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus a professor of History and Economic studies at Cambridge University wrote an essay on population which I believe holds one the key pieces of analysis in order to understand the the implications of and the reasons behind our question today of large disparity between household sizes between the rich and poor. 

In a portion of the essay which is extremely long by the way Malthus' focus was on increasing population growth and the dismal growth in the world food and other resources. He made claims that the world's population would outgrow the output of food per year just short of saying that people would suffer and die from hunger. He was also of the impression that the wealth should not be distributed from the rich to the poor as it may not have the desired impact.  

According to him, increasing the welfare of the poor by giving them more money  would eventually worsen their living conditions, as they would mistakenly be lead to think that they can support a bigger family, which would in turn depress the  preventive check and generate higher population growth. At the end of this process,  the same amount of resources has to be split between a larger population, triggering  the work of the positive check to populations. Moreover, immediately after such a  transfer, people can afford buying more food, bidding its price up and decreasing real wages, which hurt poor individuals whose main income comes from their labor. 

So the question still stands why are poorer families larger than richer ones. Here in Jamaica one argument is that the unemployed are idle so they spend most their time engaging in passionate and unprotected sex which leads to the increase procreation of children. Another theory is majority of these poorer families are headed by females so based on the absence of a man and his salary the family suffers greatly. Or the hybrid answer is to fuse both the prior theories together. 

But Malthus mentioned an even greater point, the idea of poor relief programs. He strongly disagreed with giving the poor any money as they would abuse it and he was right then and quite frankly is right now. Lets take a few examples 

1. In Jamaica there is  poor relief program called Program of Advancement through Health and Education, PATH for short where beneficiaries receive support from the government of Jamaica to ASSIST in sending their children to school. However many Jamaicans do not spend the money on such expenditure it is spent on personal effects and on entertainment and the child still suffer. Malthus proven right more money leads to the perception that they can afford more than can. 

2. Child Support- Quite a number of men do not pay their expected child support but for many men the money that they do pay does not have any benefit to their children based on the same misallocation theory by the women. Not seen biased but I have a bone to pic with many feminist on this issue, under law if custody of the child or children is granted to the father and the mother is working a substantial salary she is not expected to pay anything. However in the reverse case whether or not the man is earning a reasonable salary he is expected to provide child support; Is this fair, or equal? I think not. 

Among many others 

Richer families make their decisions based on quality of life and affordability. The concept is the more children the family has is the higher the cost of living becomes which can lead a reduction in the quality of life. Another point to note is that most richer families have two working spouses this means that less time is made available for spending time with children and thus these families tend to have less. 

Here is one guys impression of giving to the poor

One day a lawyer was riding in his limousine when he saw a guy eating grass He told the driver to stop. He got out and asked him, "Why are you eating grass".

The man replied, "I'm so poor, I can't afford a thing to eat."

So the laywer said, "Poor guy, come back to my house."

The guys then said, "But I have a wife and three kids." The layers told him to bring them along.

When they were all in the car, the poor man said, "Thanks for taking us back to your house, it is so kind of you."

The laywer said, "You're going to love it there, the grass is a foot tall." -jokebuddha