Between 1960 and 2000, Brazil’s fertility rate plummeted from 6.3 to 2.3. The only other country with a comparable decline during that period was China, under its rigid one-child policy. But what was behind the Brazilian fertility plunge?
One major factor may have been the influence of soap operas, according to a fascinating new working paper by Eliana La Ferrara, Alberto Chong, and Suzanne Duryea, issued by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for Development. Brazil’s most popular prime-time soaps have for years revolved around small and stable middle-class families that were much smaller than the traditional Brazilian family. The study found that wherever the soaps aired, the fertility for women dropped significantly, as they adapted to the reality they saw on television.
Imported soap operas, meanwhile, seem to have had no effect on fertility rates.
The study builds on work by the economists Robert Jensen and Emily Oster on the role television plays in the empowerment of women in rural India. But this new study is among the first to focus on the effects of specific programming.
(Hat tip: Foreign Policy)
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This study seems interesting but it also seems to have many problems with its main conclusion. During the same period the urban population grew much more than the rural. Also, Brazilian society which used to be much more conservative, with few women working outside the home, changed a lot as today 50% of the working force in the major cities is formed by women.
So, the study looks funny, but clearly lacks scientific rigor.
I call shennanigans something doesn’t smell right. Likely they messed up their numbers, their was probably another factor coinciding with the showing of the Soaps.
Television has absolutely no effect on people’s perception of reality and their subsequent actions. If there was some effect on the population, wouldn’t companies spend millions of dollars to display their products in appealing situations on TV?
/sarcasm/
Now that I think of it, I seem to remember something in the news a few years ago about the tv show BAYWATCH having a ‘detrimental effect’ on body image issues in the Philippines. Apparently young girls wanted to emulate the ‘actresses’ on the show and eating disorders became more prevalent (whereas beforehand they had not been such an issue). Of course, I’m sure there were other media influences as well, so to attribute that phenomena solely to Baywatch would probably be unfair.
Maybe the SOAP OPERAS reflected reality, not the other way around. Even if they were aired before, they could have anticipated the trend caused by a changing modern world
Being from Brazil myself, I find that’s an interesting theory, but I can’t help but partially agree with dan p: development is far more important than any soap operas.
OR, you could say that fertility dropped because people would rather watch the soap than… go to bed? This did create a serious conflict in many households, since it’s almost always women who want to stay up and watch the soap (it goes until around 10:30 pm) and the men would just go to bed and sleep.
TV does influence people. Remember the Rachel do? We had that happen in Brazil, with actress after actress. People do emulate what they see on TV, so the theory might be less flawed than we think.
There is this old joke in Brazil we would make with people who have a lot of children: “don’t you have television in your home?”. We also hear a lot when told that our parents families had 7, 8 kids by saying “at that time they didn’t have television”. I think the old wisdom is accurate…
I don’t think brazilian families adapted to the reality they saw on tv, but the change from rural to urban cities did the trick. There are a lot of studies linking agricultural sector families to a big number of children (they have to help out in the farm).
Also education is expensive in Brazil (public schools are not good with few exceptions). If you combine it to the high return of education there, parents were trying to reduce the number of kids to be able to provide them a better future.
Personally, I give much more credit for the impact of TV on what people do than most around here seem to, but I’ll skip that point.
I’d like to address one of the first comments, though. The one about “wealth”.
We are talking here about TVs mostly in the 12-14 inches range, very, very rarely going above 20 inches. I recall black and white TVs being sold right into the 90s. These TVs could and would often be acquired financed over 12 or 24 months, no credit checks required, directly through the seller. And you could go into the most miserable places there are here, and there were very, very miserable places, and still you’d see a communal TV.
TV was considered (still is, I guess) more important than piped water — never mind treated, and don’t even think about sewers, by most people who actually don’t actually have that. It’s market penetration is, in fact, greater than that of piped water. Deep in rural areas it wasn’t at all uncommon to have diesel generators powering TVs. Rich land-owners would do the “charity” of providing a TV their retainers could watch. Commerce in poorer areas would often have TVs as attractions.
So, forget about “wealth”. The reality above is reflected on all studies on Brazil’s wealth, economic distribution, quality of life indicators,etc.