Sons of the soil? Population growth, environmental change and men's reproductive intentions in northern Nigeria

Abstract

This paper is about two radically different views of the relatonship between population and environment, based on detailed interviews with a small group of male farmers in northern Nigeria. The study was aimed at understanding why poor people in areas of environmental pressure and land scarcity continue to have large families. Conventional academic explanations for this, based on economic models, attach great importance to the relationship between population growth, environmental change and the assumed demand for children. However, the farmers interviewed perceived these relationships in radically different ways from the models. This is for three reasons. The first is the nature of environmental change and stability in the local farming system and economy. The second is that land scarcity is conceived of in terms of social and economic scarcity, rather than the availability of a natural resource within fixed geographical boundaries. The third is that their notion of fertility control is not parity-specific or numerically based. The paper argues that these perceptions render the economic models irrelevant, and are central to an understanding of male farmers' reproductive intentions (and possibly the fertility behaviour of their wives). © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.