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The Effect of Urbanization on Parental Investment Decisions among Fiji Indians Dawn Neill University of Washington |
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This study will investigate how the context of development is altering the parental investment strategies of Fiji Indians. By considering how opportunities, in particular for maternal work, and expectations for child work shift from rural to urban settings, the interplay between patterns of productive work and resource investment in children can be incorporated into an understanding of the effects of internal migration in the developing world. High levels of internal migration to urban centers are occurring throughout the developing world. These expanding urban populations disproportionately affect those countries of the world least equipped to deal with the related consequences from inadequate infrastructure resulting in deleterious effects on population health. With rapid urbanization and migration the shifts in mode of subsistence and the value of wage-labor jobs can be dramatic. Changing dietary patterns, education options, and child work patterns often accompany these shifts. The accelerating rural to urban migration in Fiji presents problems for both rural and urban centers. Rural provinces are suffering from a collapse of medical and educational systems while urban centers are becoming crowded and facing increasing burdens on such systems, thereby changing the costs of child rearing in either environment. Using Hillard Kaplan's framework of Embodied Capital Theory, this study seeks to explore how parental investment strategies function and change in and between rural and urban environments for Fiji Indians. Parental investment decisions guide the actions parents take regarding the nutrition, education, and labor expenditures of their children. These decisions are shaped by the ecological contexts in which they occur. It is proposed that differing ecological conditions (rural vs. urban) will stimulate different patterns of investment in children to create embodied capital and different patterns of child productive labor given parental capacities and expectations for the future lives of their children, as determined through semi-structured qualitative interviews. This study will employ cross-sectional anthropometric data collection on school-aged children 5-16 years and their mothers regarding food intake, education, and work activity. Additional in-depth recording of work activity will be done using accelerometry and heart rate monitoring for a sub-sample of children to establish accurate work activity measures that can be incorporated with education and nutrition variables within each ecological setting. |