ABSTRACT
This chapter examines interrelationships among the agrarian production system, fertility rates, and proximate determinants of fertility among the Mandinka of The Gambia to determine why, despite wide-ranging social and economic change, fertility has remained high and may even have increased. Women perform intensive agrarian labor in swamp rice-producing areas of The Gambia for 67 percent more hours and 41 percent more days than men, under high humidity and under water-borne disease vector conditions. The chapter demonstrates a long-term pattern to the management of land and labor and the agricultural commercialization that has accelerated. It explores the proximate variables bearing on fertility, arguing that high and increasing fertility is an outcome of this pattern of management. In the absence of technological change, intensification of agriculture has been accompanied by decreasing returns to labor. Agricultural commercialization over the period 1951 to 1975 has led to demonstrable increases in rural per capita income.
