Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

658 Chapter 21
FOR RURAL
INFORMANTS
EDUCATION
FOR URBAN
INFORMANTS
EDUCATION
WEALTH ACCUMULATION
LOWER FAMILY SIZE
LOWER FAMILY SIZE
WEALTH ACCUMULATION
Figure 21.1. Model of how wealth, education, and family size interact in urban and
rural environments for informants in tables 21.11 and 21.13.
Most people in our sample are poor. Sixty-six percent of rural informants
(166/250) and 64% of urban informants (159/250) are below the poverty line
by our measurements. Among rural informants, education provides an edge in
the struggle against poverty, irrespective of family size, but for urban
migrants, education only provides an edge in the context of lowered family
size.
Among those who remain in the villages, then, education may lead either
to accumulation of wealth through better job opportunities, or it may have no
effect. The chances are better, though, that it leads to wealth. Once this occurs,
it leads to control of fertility. Among urban informants, education leads either
to control of natality or not. If not, then education has practically no effect on
the economic status of poor migrants. If it does lead to lowered natality, then
it may lead, over time, to a favorable change in economic status.
We can check this model by going back to our data on wealth status by
number of years in the city to see if those migrants who are economically
successful over time have both increased their education and lowered their
natality. Plausible assumptions about time ordering of variables are crucial in
building causal models. Knowing, for example, that wealthy villagers never
move to the city rules out some alternative explanations for the data presented
here.
You get the picture. The elaboration method can produce subtle results, but
it is quite straightforward to use and depends only on your imagination, on
simple arithmetic (percentages), and on basic bivariate statistics.
Partial Correlation
Of course, I haven’t proven anything by all this laying out of tables. Don’t
misunderstand me. Elaboration tables are a great start—they test whether your