Production and Reproduction in a Javanese Village

Benjamin N.F White,

1976 | Disertasi | S3 Economics

This thesis examines the notion that even in regions of the world with notorious “population problems” such as Java, continuing relatively high levels of fertility are paralleled by conditions of production in which the material advantages to households and parents of high fertility outweigh the disadvantage. The introduction



(Chapter 1) argues for the general validity of population theories which view systems of human reproduction as the result rather than the determinant of systems of production, and criticizes (Ch. 2) the assumptions arid research methods on which previous models of the assumptions and research methods on which previous model of the “value of children” in peasant societies have been based. The remainder of the thesis is based on field research (1972-3) in a village in Yogyakarta, Java, one of the poorest and most densely populated agricultural regions in the world.



Examination of the material consequences of different levels of fertility begins with description of the conditions of production externally imposed on the household (ChÂ’s. 5-6), and of the organization and development household economics (Ch. 7). Analysis of the economic function of children within the household economy (Ch's. 8-9)is, based on detailed examination of time allocation patterns in a sample of 20 landless and land-poor households, for each of which 60 day of time-allocation record were obtained during November 1972 - October 1973. Detailed analysis of eases 1s supplemented by statistical teats of the association between additions to the household labour-force through reproduction and various indicators of the household's economic performance (Ch. 10). Conditions of severe shortage and maldistr1bution of land and other productive resources impose on the household economy eondit1ons of 1ow returns to labour both inside and outside agriculture. Consequently long daily working hours throughout the year for all household members, and marked occupational multiplicity within households. Under these conditions the economic advantages of high fertility lie not only in the provision of old-age security to parents (Ch. 9) but a180 in the inputs of productive and useful work by children from an early age.



Evidence of widespread periodic us. of both traditional and modern methods of birth-control indicates not so much the desire. To reduce the total number of birth as the necessity to space births and avoid periods of intolerable dependency-ratios within the household, while still maintaining level. of reproduction well above replacement. The contradiction between the economic advantages of high fertility to individual parents, and the increasing poverty of a growing population that is 1n part the result of their reproductive behavior, has important implications for the eventual achievement of non-Malthusian population control in Java and similar societies. Evidence from other countries indicates that population control is ultimately achieved only by radical transformations which eliminate the socio-economic basis of this contradiction.

Kata Kunci : Production, reproduction