Canadian Public Policy

La Fin de la revanche des berceaux: qu'en pensent les Québécoises? by Jacques Henripin; EvelynLapierre-AdamcykReview by: Karol KrotkiCanadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Autumn, 1976), pp. 649-651Published by: University of Toronto Press on behalf of Canadian Public PolicyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3550210 .

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Reviews/Comptes rendus / 649

underlines the difficulties of getting joint action among even a handful of actors. Paul Streeten enlarges upon the problems of keeping a cartel solid, and he also points out several drawbacks to commodity agreements, even if they can be made to work. Frances Stewart is equally surgical in exposing all the blockages in the way of increasing South-South trade, and thus reducing reliance on the markets of the indus- trialized North.

Constantine Vaitsos, who has led Andean Pact studies on a regional strategy towards transnational enterprises, concludes that foreign investors foster a dual struc- ture in the society of poorer countries because they are concerned to cater to the needs of high-income consumers; nationalization, he argues (perhaps a little too cheerfully), galvanizes a developing country into mobilising its best talent and into further actions of self-reliance. Edith Penrose's essay, on ways by which a developing country may maintain control of a nationalized enterprise while recruiting foreign management, helps balance Vaitsos's rallying-call with practical directions.

Perhaps most poignant is a voice from Bangladesh, that of Nurul Islam. Writing about the least developed countries, he predicts a decline in their terms of trade of 25 per cent by 1980. He shows that their debt service ratio (debt service payments as a percentage of current exports) was twice that of the middle- and higher-income developing countries, while the value of their exports had actually declined over a seven-year period. He ends by declaring that the crisis in the world today is the product not simply of scarce raw materials or inadequate resources for the development of poor nations, but also of political leadership and statesmanship. After Nairobi, there is little doubt about that.

CLYDE SANGER / International Development Research Centre

La Fin de la revanche des berceaux: qu'en pensent les Qubb6coises? by Jacques Henripin and Evelyn Lapierre-Adamcyk, with the cooperation of Patrick Festy. Montreal, Les Presses de l'Universit6 de Montr6al, I974, PP. I64.

After years of only modest interest Canada provided herself with three surveys of human fertility. These are known in the trade as KAP surveys for Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice in family planning. The three were conducted by demographers: one in the summer of 1968 for the Metropolitan area of Toronto (University of Western Ontario), another in the fall of 1971 for the province of Quebec (University of Montreal), and the third one in the winter 1973/74 for Edmonton (University of Alberta). The book reviewed is the first report from a second of these surveys. If the authors shared the prevalent belief that dullness is the hallmark of scholarship, the title of the book would have been 'The Recent and Future Fertility of the Families of Quebec.' As it is, they produced a book that is not only solid, dependable, and scholarly, but also very well written. Not only is its structure clear, logical, and mnemonically helpful, but it is also presented in lively and beautiful French. Yet it will be easy fare for the anglophonic reader; he will also acquire serendipitously a number of picturesque, idiomatic expressions.

A heavy questionnaire of some 200 questions was applied to 1,745 respondents intended to represent all the ever married women of Quebec below the age of 65 ('ever married' is demographic jargon for all non-spinsters, that is, currently married, widowed, divorced and separated). In addition to standard fertility questions on past reproductive behaviour and the usual demographic and socio-economic background, questions covered many other fields: children expected, attitude of married couples towards and about children, female labour force participation, various dimensions of family life, including problems of housing, contraceptive knowledge, attitude towards abortion, hypothetical social measures that might facilitate parenthood and eventually increases in fertility, and many, many others. Obviously a small book of 164 pages can cover only a selection of these topics and consequently the seven chapters are limited

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650 / Reviews/Comptes rendus

to attitudes to having children, recent and developing attitudes and experiences with regard to family size, some simple variables related to fertility, limit on effective fertility and potentially pronatalist measures, a very cursory introduction to con- traceptive practices and to attitudes to abortion, an overview of the data so far analysed and their contribution to the development of a pronatalist policy.

In line with the very superior mode of presentation of their findings, the authors have pulled out the main 23 results onto the first three pages for immediate consumption by the busy reader. The findings are so important and interesting, almost fascinating, that few readers will resist the temptation to go through the whole book. Quebec does share in the telescoping of family size preferences observed elsewhere in the developed world: families limit their actual reproduction, and their more theoretical preferences to two, less often three children per family, a far cry from the family of fourteen children on the book cover. Among the measures important to the lessening of the burden of parenthood, provision of part-time employment for mothers was considered least important (WLM partisans, please note), but even if all the suggested measures (six of them) were acted upon, the resultant fertility increase would be no more than to per cent over the current level. The fertility of the francophones would have to be 20 to 40 per cent higher than the current levels to counterbalance the anglophone fertility and migration that favours the anglophone proportion, a requirement on which no government has effective means of influence. No more can be given in a brief review. The authors limit themselves to merely indicating the implications which demography could have upon the temper of the francophones and the constitutional future of this country.

The text is mainly descriptive, based on interpretation of tabular material, and does not fall into multi-variate analysis and similar advanced techniques. The authors stress that they did not engage much in 'holding constant' some variables, while discussing others, and that to that extent their analysis is preliminary. However, so much sheer and insightful wisdom emanates from the text that it is doubtful whether many, if any, of their conclusions will have to be changed on closer analysis. They present 29 tables and 19 graphs; also a most welcome and rare feature: tabular data in an appendix to support their graphs. On the whole, adequate details of the sampling scheme are given. Nevertheless, the suspicion arises that households were selected purposefully, rather than probabilistically (to obtain a potential respondent: 'ever married' aged less than 65) with untold damage to the representativeness of the sample. The socio-economic categories are not always comparable with national data (is it academic prima donna- ship or ignorance of national practices at the time the code book is set?). The categories lose further comparability due to the otherwise laudable need of making an early comparison between the 1961 census and the 1971I survey, without waiting for the results of the 1971 census, though many of the required results must have been available by early 1974, when the book was being locked up for printing. Throughout the analysis there is insufficient stress on the fact that Quebec marital fertility gives a misleadingly high impression of Quebec overall fertility in comparison with other provinces, which rely less than Quebec on the Irish method of family limitation: late marriage and high proportions remaining celibate.

A comparison with the Toronto and Edmonton surveys is inevitable. Supported by the provincial government, the study was more generously provided for and sooner reported upon; the other two were federally supported. All three suffered from lo to 12 per cent refusals, the non-response percentage being 18 in Edmonton, 21 in Quebec, and 29 in Toronto. However much social scientists might feel obligated to report refusals and non-response, they are still a long way from taking these seriously into account in the analysis. Typically, differences in ratios, rates, and percentages are discussed as if there were Ioo per cent response and no refusals. Additionally, the Quebec study suffered from a mysterious loss of 140 questionnaires in the survey centre (p. 146), and the utter confusion of Table A.5 shows that there must have been other problems. One, of course, hopes that they were all randomly distributed over all the respondents, as one does with refusals and non-response, but what if they were all concentrated in one age group, and in some birth order or some other critical group?

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Reviews/Comptes rendus / 651

And some of the differences reported upon, and apparently taken seriously, are pretty narrow.

Assuming, or rather hoping that these methodological difficulties can somehow be solved (an unlikely hope, not likely to be fulfilled either by the forthcoming national fertility survey with a million dollar bill), the three surveys represent three different sub-populations of Canada, justifying some cross-national comparisons. Should the learned societies field a comparative seminar on these topics at their next meeting? For example, the young women of Quebec are no more 'liberal' in their attitudes to contraception and abortion than the older women; and all Quebec women are less liberal than the women of Toronto (in spite of the fact that the Toronto women come from steady unions with husband present), but similar to the women of Edmonton. With regard to the Quebec-Edmonton similarity there are two marked exceptions: more Edmonton women approve of abortion when the health of the mother is en- dangered, but fewer when the conception is out of wedlock. The latter tendency was reported on other and earlier occasions and was speculatively tied to the euphoria of the vast open spaces of the West.

In a policy journal it is appropriate to point out that the simplicity of any conceivable policy measures is almost frightening in its bareness in comparison with the complex and mystifying network of socio-psychological interrelationships. The women of Quebec are favourably disposed towards children. Even the young ones, those who are modern and 'liberal' in their general attitudes, consider children an essential element in happy family life. How come then that Quebec had the lowest fertility rate over the last several years? With regard to more economic questions, the answers are 'cleaner.' Two-thirds consider their income sufficient for their needs (and that in a province with less than the average national income) and only ten per cent report that they have insufficient income in the meaning of being deprived of essentials and inability to save much; still a far cry from the 'six million poor' or whatever number is quoted on the covers of some books by the socially concerned.

What of the future? There is no indication that there will be a reversal of the low fertility currently being experienced, though there is still at least some room for such a reversal during the years remaining to those age groups that have not yet completed their reproduction; the younger the age group, the more space for a reversal. While the authors remain sceptical about the possibility of a reversal in Quebec, they do admit the possibility of demographic waves (typically, in doing so they cite - p. 124 - two American sources of 1972 and 1976, but ignore a Canadian source of 1968). However, for the political implications of this swing back to become really potent, the swing would have to be a swing back more powerful in Quebec than in other provinces, and of this there is no indication, not even hypothetical.

KAROL KROTKI I Department of Sociology, University of Alberta

Coastal Zone: Framework for Management in Atlantic Canada by Douglas M. Johnston, A. Paul Pross, Ian McDougall, with the special assistance of Norman G. Dale. Halifax, Institute of Public Affairs, Dalhousie University, I975. Pp. xiii, 249 (incl. appendices).

The broad jurisdiction claimed by Canada in the current law of the sea negotiations has made the problem of managing coastal and off-shore areas more acute. It is likely that, either through unilateral action or as a result of multilateral agreement, Canada will soon exercise controls over the sea up to 200 miles and over the sea-bed to a greater distance. How prepared is this country to assume such control and manage effectively broad areas of maritime jurisdiction? If a rational coastal management plan existed up to the limits of present jurisdiction (twelve miles in the case of the territorial sea, further in certain areas for fisheries and pollution control, and even more extensive in

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