DIVERGENT FERTILITY outcomes among regions or countries, like development outcomes more generally, are commonly ascribed to differences in state action—that is, to government policy, deliberate or, it may be, inadvertent. However, divergence can also, often more persuasively, be traced to differences in initial conditions: in cultural and institutional inheritance, the supply of human capital, even features of the physical (natural and built) environment. These together are the materials that statesand societies find themselves endowed with, the hands they are dealt. They are What might be called, in brief, their legacy. In reality, of course, policy and legacy are interwoven: policy actions build on some legacy elements and attempt, if often ineffectively, to combat or work around others. They jointly influence outcomes. They do not fully determine outcomes: external conditions and events may also count— not least among them the pressures, constraints, and opportunities located in the larger political and economic environment. These might collectively be termed circumstance. Factors deriving from legacy and circumstance can shift or shrink the policy space in ways not always apparent to outside observers, arguing for circumspection in appraising past failures in policy achievement and, equally, for reining in extravagant hopes of reform agendas.
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