Richard E. Bilsborrow

Population pressures and agricultural development in developing countries: A conceptual framework and recent evidence

Abstract The purpose of this paper are (a) to develop a more comprehensive conceptual approach for investigating the responses to increases in rural population density in developing countries; and (b) to present recent empirical evidence illustrating these responses. The variety of responses is empirically illustrated for broad regions in developing countries, including increases in arable land, land intensification, out-migration, and fertility decline, though the focus is on the economic changes. Viewing the economic changes both across countries and over time suggests wide scope for further increases in agricultural output, even with existing technology. Nevertheless, prospects for raising living standards in the developing countries are better with slower rates of population growth.

THE IMPACT OF ORIGIN COMMUNITY CHARACTERISTICS ON RURAL-URBAN OUT-MIGRATION IN A DEVELOPING COUNTRY

It is widely believed that structural variables such as inequitable land distribution, lack of rural employment opportunities, and rural-urban wage and amenity gaps influence population movements in developing countries. Yet quantitative evidence is scant. In this paper a multilevel model is used to investigate the effects of individual-, household-, and areal-level factors on rural-urban out-migration in the Ecuadorian Sierra. Data from a detailed survey carried out in 1977–1978 and from government macro-areal statistics are used to investigate factors affecting the out-migration of youths aged 12–25. Preliminary conclusions are presented on the usefulness of multilevel models in studying migration and policy implications for Ecuador.

Migration, urbanization, and development : new directions and issues

Foreword N. Sadik. 1. The State of the Art and Overview of the Chapters R.E. Bilsborrow. Part 1: Old and New Patterns of Internal Migration and Urbanization in Developing Countries. 2. What Do We Know About Recent Trends in Urbanization? N. Chen, et al. 3. Recent Internal Migration Processes in Sub-Saharan Africa: Determinants, Consequences, and Data Adequacy Issues J.O. Oucho. 4. New Trends in Urban Settlement and the Role of Intraurban Migration: The Case of Sao Paulo/Brazil J.M. Pinto da Cunha. Part 2: Migration Determinants and Linkages with Economic Growth. 5. Rural Out- Migration in China: A Multilevel Model Junming Zhu. 6. Migration Motivation, Family Links, and Job Search Methods of Rural-to-Urban Migrants in India B. Banerjee. 7. Measuring the Macroeconomic Impact of Internal Migration: A Production Function Approach with Evidence from Peru A. Morrison, Xin Guo. Part 3: The Consequences of Migration. 8. Migration and Urbanization in West Africa: Methodological Issues in Data Collection and Inference P. Bocquier, S. Traore. 9. Assessing the Consequences of Internal Migration: Methodological Issues and a Case Study on Thailand Based on Longitudinal Household Survey Data P. Guest. 10. Rural-Urban Migration and Development: Evidence from Bangladesh R. Afsar. 11. Migration and the Fertility Transition in African Cities M. Brockerhoff. Part 4: Migration, Urbanization Processes, and Implications. 12. A Reassessment of Migration and Urbanization in Mexico in the 20thCentury C.B. Paz. 13. The Coping Capacity of Latin Americas Cities A.G. Gilbert. 14. Urban Economic Growth in the 21st Century: Assessing the International Competitiveness of Metropolitan Areas D.A. Rondinelli, G. Vastag. Appendix: Internal Migration and Urbanization Recommendations. Symposium on Internal Migration and Urbanization in Developing Countries: Implications for Habitat II.

Changes in Population and Land Use Over Time in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

This paper draws upon a detailed longitudinal survey of households living on agricultural plots in the northern three provinces of the Ecuadorian Amazon, the principal region of colonization by migrants in Ecuador since the 1970s. Following the discovery of petroleum in 1967 near what has subsequently come to be the provincial capital and largest Amazonian city of Lago Agrio, oil companies built roads to lay pipelines to extract and pump oil across the Andes for export. As a result, for the past 30 years over half of both Ecuadors export earnings and government revenues have come from petroleum extracted from this region. But the roads also facilitated massive spontaneous in-migration of families from origin areas in the Ecuadorian Sierra, characterized by minifundia and rural poverty. This paper is about those migrants and their effects on the Amazonian landscape. We discuss the data collection methodology and summarize key results on settler characteristics and changes in population, land use, land ownership, technology, labor allocation, and living conditions, as well as the relationships between changes in population and changes in land use over time. The population in the study region has been growing rapidly due to both natural population growth (high fertility) and in-migration. This has led to a dramatic process of subdivision and fragmentation of plots in the 1990s, which contrasts with the consolidation of plots that has occurred in most of the mature frontier areas of the Brazilian Amazon. This fragmentation has led to important changes in land tenure and land use, deforestation, cattle raising, labor allocation, and settler welfare.

Community-level determinants of contraceptive use in the Philippines: a structural analysis.

We use household and community data from the Philippines to estimate a multilevel model of contraceptive use. We go beyond previous efforts in this field by developing a structural model that recognizes joint endogeneity and the temporal ordering of variables, by considering a wider range of community influences on fertility behavior, and by employing an econometric procedure allowing for a multilevel error structure. The results suggest that there are significant effects on fertility behavior of community-level family planning services, labor-market conditions, and infrastructure development. These results provide insights regarding the structural determinants of contraceptive use and fertility that are useful for drawing policy implications.

Land use migration and natural resource deterioration: the experience of Guatemala and the Sudan.

There has been little research directly linking migration to environmental degradation. Guatemala has had a population growth rate of 3%/year for the past 2 decades. The level of rural to urban migration has been heavy because of insurgency and wide rural to urban income gaps and land inequalities although it still remains low for a Latin American country which usually have high percentages of urban populations. Using past population trends population projections were used in an effort to predict the environmental effect of population growth and migration. Current land distribution indicates that rapid fragmentation of land is occurring through inheritance. Guatemala is suffering from many of the same problems as other 3rd world countries: soil erosion deforestation sedimentation of water sheds and urban pollution. A variety of policy interventions are needed including family planning services land redistribution and price and technology policies that stimulate agricultural production and raise rural family incomes and labor absorption. Other policies that deal directly with deforestation and soil erosion e.g. farmer education programs and stricter enforcement of existing legislation banning unauthorized tree cutting are needed. Decertification in the Sudan is being caused by patterns of migration and population growth. Sudans population is mostly rural and settled with 11% being nomadic and 20% being urbanized. The Sudan suffers from many of the same problems as other African countries. There has been a general decline in agricultural production per capita over the last 15 years despite large increases in agricultural land use. Growing numbers of people animals and crops have placed stress on rangelands. New Water resource development has concentrated nomadic patterns in certain areas causing rapid land degradation. Deforestation has grown because of increased need for wood and charcoal. Along with deforestation decertification is increasing because land is left bare from overuse. While the causes of environmental deterioration are not yet well understood population growth is an obvious factor that if controlled would reduce the stress on the environment.

Environmental Influences on Human Migration in Rural Ecuador

The question of whether environmental conditions influence human migration has recently gained considerable attention, driven by claims that global environmental change will displace large populations. Despite this high level of interest, few quantitative studies have investigated the potential effects of environmental factors on migration, particularly in the developing world and for gradual but pervasive forms of environmental change. To address this, a retrospective migration survey was conducted in rural Ecuador and linked to data on topography, climate, and weather shocks. These data were used to estimate multivariate event history models of alternative forms of mobility (local mobility, internal migration, and international migration), controlling for a large number of covariates. This approach is generalizable to other study areas and responds to calls for the development of more rigorous methods in this field. The results indicate that adverse environmental conditions do not consistently increase rural out-migration and, in some cases, reduce migration. Instead, households respond to environmental factors in diverse ways, resulting in complex migratory responses. Overall, the results support an alternative narrative of environmentally induced migration that recognizes the adaptability of rural households in responding to environmental change.

THE DETERMINANTS OF BREAST-FEEDING IN SRI LANKA

Breast-feeding is the focus of rapidly growing interest. Research on the determinants of breast-feeding is only beginning. The research in this paper is based on World Fertility Survey data for Sri Lanka. We develop what we believe to be an appropriate probit model and find that there are significant socioeconomic factors that influence breast-feeding, in addition to the demographic factors focused upon in the literature. Moreover, some of them have clear policy implications, which are elaborated herein with respect to labor force, education, family planning and internal migration policies. In the course of the paper we also address a number of generally neglected statistical issues that should be considered in analyzing the determinants of breastfeeding, including problems resulting from digit preference or age heaping, the need to use dichotomous dependent variables, unavoidable truncation biases in the basic data, and structural shifts in the determinants of breastfeeding at different durations.

Contrasting Colonist and Indigenous Impacts on Amazonian Forests

To examine differences in land use and environmental impacts between colonist and indigenous populations in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon, we combined data from household surveys and remotely sensed imagery that was collected from 778 colonist households in 64 colonization sectors, and 499 households from five indigenous groups in 36 communities. Overall, measures of deforestation and forest fragmentation were significantly greater for colonists than indigenous peoples. On average, colonist households had approximately double the area in agriculture and cash crops and 5.5 times the area in pasture as indigenous households. Nevertheless, substantial variation in land-use patterns existed among the five indigenous groups in measures such as cattle ownership and use of hired agricultural labor. These findings support the potential conservation value of indigenous lands while cautioning against uniform policies that homogenize indigenous ethnic groups.

Characterizing and Modeling Patterns of Deforestation and Agricultural Extensification in the Ecuadorian Amazon

We examine human-environment interactions in the Oriente region of the Ecuadorian Amazon through a Geographic Information Science (GISc) perspective. A remote sensing time-series is used to represent LULC (land use/land cover) dynamics, a GIS to assess resource endowments at local and regional settings, a longitudinal household survey to measure socioeconomic conditions and changes over time at the farm or household finca level, and a community-level survey administered to community leaders, farmers, teachers, women, and health workers in places ranging from tiny communities to the largest city, Lago Agrio to measure infrastructural linkages between households and their communities. Here, we (a) describe the multi-thematic, spatially explicit database assembled to address deforestation and agricultural extensification; (b) indicate changes in finca demographic and land use characteristics reported in the 1990 and 1999 household surveys; (c) use a hybrid digital classification approach for repeatable LULC characterizations for selected Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Multispectral Scanner (MSS) images; (d) apply pattern metrics to classified satellite data to assess the composition and spatial organization of the landscape through trajectories of landscape structure; and (e) use a cellular automata (CA) approach to simulate LULC patterns for antecedent and future periods, given historical and current LULC patterns, as defined through the satellite time-series and hypotheses about the importance of geographic access to and spatial diffusion from the region’s central city.