Population change in the wake of agricultural improvement: lessons for Pakistan

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of several types of modern agricultural technologies since the early 1960s on fertility-based demographic transitions between 1971 and 1981 at the district level in rural India. It begins with an estimation of total fertility rates in Section 2, followed by a brief district-level characterisation of agriculture in Section 3. Section 4 presents the results of empirical estimation. Section 5 concludes the paper. Increased mechanisation and crop-specific yields and a general reduction in intertemporal variability in input use and output have been key issues to which agricultural research and policies have been addressed. Improvements in these critical areas, have generally tended to retard demographic transitions in the medium term. Policies and/or technologies conducive to district-level (and by extension, farm-level) output diversification are likely to retard demographic transition. Policies aimed at increasing rural incomes, particularly rural wages for females (we suspect), will probably promote swifter demographic transitions. -from Authors