Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

656 Chapter 21
longer the urban migrants remained in the city, the greater the likelihood that
they would rise above poverty. Now we know that unless they lower their
natality and increase their education, the poverty-stricken villagers in our
sample are probably better off staying home and not migrating to the city. If
the urban migrants in our sample (all of whom started out as poor villagers)
fail to limit natality, they lose the advantage that education would otherwise
bring them. Rural people keep this advantage, irrespective of family size.
Explaining this finding, of course, is up to you. That’s what theory is all
about. A causal connection between variables requires a mechanism that
explains how things work. (See chapter 2 if you need to go over the issue of
covariation and causality.) In this instance, we might conjecture that rural people
have lower overall expenses, especially if they own their own land and
homes. They usually have extended families that cut down the cost of child
care and that provide no-interest loans during emergencies. They grow much
of their own food. And having more children may help them farm more land
and cut down on expenses.
Urban people get more education, and this gets them better paying jobs. But
if they have many mouths to feed, and if they have to pay rent, and if they
lack the financial support of kin close by, then these factors may vitiate any
advantage their education might otherwise bring.
Taking the Elaboration Another Step
We can look for clues that support or challenge our theory by elaborating
the model still further, this time using family size as the dependent variable.
Table 21.12 shows the result of cross-tabulating family size by education, controlling
for residence.
Chi-square for the left half of this table is insignificant, but for the right half
TABLE 21.12
Family Size by Education, Controlling for Residence
Rural
Urban
8th 8th Row 8th 8th Row
grade grade totals grade grade totals
3 children 70 97 167 100 32 132
3 children 30 53 83 59 59 118
Column totals 100 150 250 159 91 250
2 .77 ns (not significant) 2 17.86, p .001, OR 3.13