Knowledge that Transforms

and, therefore, T* equals the value of the subsistence commodity-bundle, AB, that is the labor-time socially necessary for producing B by the techniques (a, a.) actually prevailing in the economy. It is important to emphasize that there is no element of competitive arbitrage in (4). It is no more than the equation for calculation of the quantities of labor socially necessary for producing goods.

My colleagues at Williams, especially Thomas McCoy, James Halstead, Thomas Tietenberg, and Donald Keesing, gave me invaluable criticism on this paper. At an earlier stage, Mark Perlman 's comments were particularly helpful as were those of Roger Bolton, Stephen Lewis, William Gates, Helen Hughes, Earl McFarland and Francisco Thoumi. A Ford Foundation grant (720-0234), the Williams College Center for Development Economics and the World Bank Capital Utilization Research Project made important contributions to this work. Opinions and errors of fact or interpretation are, of course, all mine.

Some economists are doing research in applying Hicksian microtheory to explain the fertility behavior of man and fertility differentials. This article considers some highlights of the problem to serve for further reading. In reviewing the recent economic sociological and population theories there are 1) the theory of demographic transition which depends heavily on the reduction of desired fertility 2) Leibensteins 1957 theory of fertility which addressed itself primarily to the question and explanation of fertility decline in the course of sustained per capita income growth 3) the Chicago School theories among which is Beckers theory which applied the Hicksian version of microconsumption theory to family fertility behavior and came up with some interesting interpretations and 4) other theories which emphasize infant mortality effects socioeconomic status changes in norms and institutions threshold values in income and/or education etc. The author places more emphasis on the critique and methodological analysis of the Chicago School theories and finally turns toward the discussion of a possibly more adequate theory which assumes that there is a higher degree of substitution between the extent to which people indulge themselves in causual decision making and the point at which economic constraints force or create strong pressures for calculated decision making.