HOUSEHOLD CROWDING AND REPRODUCTIVE-BEHAVIOR

Ethological studies suggest that animal populations that live in crowd ed conditions display a number of behaviors that tend to limit the siz e of the population, such as aberrant forms of sexual behavior, small litter sizes, a higher incidence of spontaneous abortion, ineffectual maternal care, and even cannibalism of their young. Studies of househo ld crowding in North America cities have produced only modest and sele ctive evidence that crowding has similar effects among humans. In this paper, we examine the effect of household crowding on marital sexual relations, on desire for additional children, and on fetal and child l oss in Bangkok, Thailand, a city with a much wider range of household crowding than is typically found in North America. In spite of the wid er range, and higher mean level of crowding, we find that both the obj ective and subjective dimensions of crowding have only modest selectiv e effects on sexual and reproductive behavior.