Post-war Sierra Leone has experienced a population explosion that has raised questions among rural farmers about the relationship between family size and poverty. Agricultural decline and the high cost of schooling are not prompting parents to articulate a desire for smaller families; rather, they highlight that the uncertainty around articulating the “right” number of children is unresolvable because the ability to send children to school is predicated on increasing agricultural outputs that decline precisely because population pressure has reduced soil fertility. Bolten and Marcantonio conclude that this renders family size the heart of a paradox, where there is no optimal number of children.

战后塞拉利昂经历了人口爆炸，引发了农村农民对家庭规模与贫困之间关系的质疑。农业衰退和高昂的教育费用并没有促使父母表达对小家庭的渴望；相反，他们强调，关于阐明“正确”儿童数量的不确定性是无法解决的，因为送孩子上学的能力取决于增加农业产量，而农业产量下降正是因为人口压力降低了土壤肥力。Bolten 和 Marcantonio 得出的结论是，这使得家庭规模成为悖论的核心，即没有最佳子女数量。