The effect of longevity on schooling and fertility: evidence from the Brazilian Demographic and Health Survey

This paper presents microevidence on the effect of adult longevity on schooling and fertility. Higher longevity is systematically associated with higher schooling and lower fertility. The paper looks at the 1996 Brazilian Demographic and Health Survey and constructs an adult longevity variable based on the mortality history of the respondent's family. Families with histories of high adult mortality in previous generations have systematically higher fertility and lower schooling. These effects are not associated with omitted variables and remain unchanged after a large array of factors is accounted for (demographic characteristics, family-specific child mortality, regional development, socioeconomic status, etc.).

Which factors explain the decline in infant and child mortality in Matlab,Bangladesh?

Infant and child mortality rates have decreased substantially in Matlab, Bangladesh, as they have in many developing areas. We use data from the Matlab Demographic Surveillance System on nearly 94,000 singleton live births that occurred between 1987 and 2002 to investigate the extent to which the change in mortality over this period can be explained by changes in reproductive patterns and socio-economic characteristics. We estimate Cox proportional hazards models for four subperiods of infancy and childhood. Changes over time in reproductive patterns (maternal age, parity, and pregnancy spacing) and in the socio-economic characteristics we consider (e.g. maternal education, SES) explain between 10 and 40% of the decline in mortality rates. Changes in maternal education explain the largest portion of the reduction in infant and child mortality over time that we are able to explain, followed by reductions in the incidence of short interpregnancy intervals. In the other direction, decreases in fertility over time led to increases in the proportion of births that were first births, putting upward pressure on mortality.

Population Density is a Key Factor in Declining Human Fertility

In studying the complex determinants of human fertility, social scientists have given little attention to population density, although reproduction has been shown to be density-dependent for a wide variety of other species. Using fixed effects models on the time series of 145 countries and controlling for key social and economic variables, we find a consistent and significant negative relationship between human fertility and population density. Moreover, we find that individual fertility preferences also decline with population density. These findings suggest that population density should be included as a variable in future studies of fertility determinants.

Child mortality, fertility, and human capital accumulation

This article analyzes the impact of decline in child mortality on fertility and economic growth. The study shows that the timing of mortality relative to education is crucial to implications of mortality decline. If child mortality is realized before education starts, an exogenous decline in child mortality leads to a decline in education—a finding that is opposite to those of studies that considered a decline in mortality after the cost of education has been incurred. The work also demonstrates the role of parental human capital in reducing child mortality and the causal link between rising education and declining child mortality.

Planned fertility and family background: a quantile regression for counts analysis

This paper examines how education and family background affect the fertility plans of young individuals in Mexico. Quantile regression for count data is used for the analysis. Results indicate that education and family structure affect planned fertility only at the tails of the conditional distribution. Education reduces planned fertility only among women with relatively strong preferences towards children. An absent father reduces planned fertility mostly at the bottom of the conditional distribution.

Growth and inequality: a demographic explanation

This paper investigates the relationship between growth and inequality from a demographic point of view. In an extended model of the accidental bequest with endogenous fertility, we analyze the effects of a decrease in old-age mortality rate on the equilibrium growth rate as well as on the income distribution. We show that the relationship between growth and inequality is at first positive and then may be negative in the process of population aging. The results are consistent with the empirical evidence in some developed countries.

Growing old and staying young: population policy in an ageing closed economy

This paper analyses the relation between public pensions, fertility and child care in a closed-economy overlapping generations model with endogenous fertility. It is shown that raising a child involves two social externalities and that it is optimal to introduce child allowances if the government redistributes income from the young to the old. The optimal child allowance rises when longevity increases. If the costs of raising children depend positively on the wage, a third externality arises and the returns to savings should be taxed.

The earned income tax credit and fertility

Government programs designed to provide income safety nets often restrict eligibility to families with children, creating an unintended fertility incentive. This paper considers whether dramatically changing incentives in the earned income tax credit affect fertility rates in the USA. We use birth certificate data spanning the period 1990 to 1999 to test whether expansions in the credit influenced birthrate among targeted families. While economic theory would predict a positive fertility effect of the program for many eligible women, our results indicate that expanding the credit produced only extremely small reductions in higher order fertility among white women.

Are young cohorts of women delaying first birth in Mexico?

In the last decades, female permanent sterilisation became the most used method of contraception in Mexico. During this time, the demand for pills, condoms and other short-term contraceptives fell consistently. The shift in the demand for contraceptives raises concerns among demographers that the timing of children may remain unchanged regardless of observed reductions in period fertility rates. This paper assesses such ideas in the context of the timing of a first child using duration models as the main analysis tool. Findings suggest that young cohorts of women are effectively delaying first birth relative to the experience of older generations.

Does parents’ valuation of children’s health mimic their valuation of own health?

A single latent variable model of health status and therapeutic health care utilization is estimated for parents and own children of 6,557 US households. The equation system that identifies latent health status simultaneously determines a number of indicators of general health, including presence of morbidity symptoms, mobility limitations, medication needs, and utilization of therapeutic health care services. The main goal of the paper was to obtain an unbiased estimate of parents’ marginal substitution rate between own and child health. Results indicate that parents’ valuation of their children’s health exceeds their valuation of own health by almost twofold on average.

Life satisfaction and the economic and social characteristics of neighbourhoods

This paper uses data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey to investigate the association between neighbourhood effects and life satisfaction. We find that neighbourhood measures of social support and interaction and the absence of socio-economic deprivation are positively and significantly correlated with individual life satisfaction. Neighbourhood fixed effects, however, explain only an additional 1.5 to 2.5% of the variance in life satisfaction over the 14% explained by individual characteristics.

An Empirical Test of a Neo-Malthusian Theory of Fertility Change

Some neo-Malthusians regard fertility as being kept in check by scarcities and constraints and, conversely, as being raised by economic prosperity. Since out-migration to developed countries and the receipt of food aid from developed countries relax the constraints imposed by a country’s carrying capacity, both will have a positive effect on fertility rates in developing countries. Moreover, better economic prospects will also raise fertility, all other things equal. This article provides an empirical test of these hypotheses derived from a neo-Malthusian theory of fertility change. The results fail to confirm the theory and often contradict it.

The impact of family policies on fertility in industrialized countries: a review of the literature

This paper examines the theoretical propositions and empirical evidence linking policies and fertility. More specifically, the analysis presented in this paper draws attention to the complex mechanisms that theoretically link policies and demographic outcomes: mechanisms that involve imperfect information and decisions that are rationally bound by very specific circumstances. As to the empirical evidence, studies provide mixed conclusions as to the effect of policies on fertility. While a small positive effect of policies on fertility is found in numerous studies, no statistically significant effect is found in others. Moreover, some studies suggest that the effect of policies tends to be on the timing of births rather than on completed fertility.

Estimation of damage to human health due to forest burning in the Amazon

Forest burning stands as a highly used practice in the Brazilian Amazon Forest. Burning trees is the cheapest way to expand agricultural frontiers in the Amazon region. Nevertheless, the smoke generated in this process can produce undesirable negative effects, in particular health-induced problems by the polluted air. This study aims to investigate whether these effects on the health of the region’s population are statistically significant, using as variables mortality and morbidity rates associated with respiratory diseases. The estimated morbidity model was used to estimate the health damage to those people who became ill only by the fire.

An Empirical Analysis of the Interrelationship between Components of the Social Quality Theoretical Construct

Social quality has been presented as a theory that can explain economic and social progress of the daily lives of a population. The components of social quality include: socio-economic security, social inclusion, social cohesion and social empowerment. The social quality perspective views people as interacting within collective identities that provide the contexts of self-realisation. The paper tests the social quality theory by focusing on the relationship between social inclusion and social cohesion, the notion of social relations, to socio-economic security using the context of the family as a facilitator of self-realisation. Using data from the Israel Social Survey 2003, six indicators of socio-economic security were analysed. There was a small but positive and significant relationship between social inclusion and socio-economic security. We found no relationship between socio-economic security and social cohesion. These findings tend to undermine those aspects of social quality theory which posit close connections between these elements on a conceptual level.

Subjective Well-being Among Young People in Transition to Adulthood

This study used a nationally representative sample of young people in Germany from the German Socio-Economic Panel to examine how demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the young persons and their parents, personality traits of the young persons, quality and quantity of relationships, the parent's level of life satisfaction, and other measures of satisfaction for the young person are related to the initial assessment of life satisfaction by the individual at the critical point of transition from adolescence to adulthood. The results indicated that consistency existed across different domains of satisfaction, specifically satisfaction with life and satisfaction with grades. A strong pattern of association was also observed between the subjective well-being of the adolescents and variables that measured different dimensions of the quality and quantity of interpersonal relationships, including relationships with parents.

Sibling size and investment in children’s education: an asian instrument

This study estimates the trade-off between child quantity and quality by exploiting exogenous variation in fertility under son preferences. Under son preferences, both sibling size and fertility timing are determined depending on the first child’s gender, which is random as long as parents do not abort girls at their first childbearing. For the sample South Korean households, I find strong evidence of unobserved heterogeneity in preferences for child quantity and quality across households. The trade-off is not as strong as observed cross-sectional relationships would suggest. However, even after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, a greater number of siblings have adverse effects on per-child investment in education, in particular, when fertility is high.

Fertility, child care outside the home, and pay-as-you-go social security

We examine the long-run effects of the pay-as-you-go (PAYG) social security scheme on fertility and welfare of individuals in an overlapping generations model, assuming that child-care services are available in the market. We show that the impact of a tax increase on fertility depends on the relative magnitudes of the standard intergenerational redistribution effect through the social security system, the (implicit) subsidy effect through tax-exemption of child rearing at home, and the price effect through changes in the relative price of market child care, and that if parental child-rearing time is inelastic, a tax cut could bring about a Pareto-improving allocation.

“Backslanted X” fertility dynamics and macroeconomics

A large number of pairs of countries exhibit a dynamic pattern in which: (1) Fertility in both countries declines across time; (2) initially, one country has a higher fertility and a lower per-capita income than the other; and (3) in time, as per-capita incomes converge, fertility rates in the poorer country become lower than in the richer one. This article documents the prevalence of such dynamics and offers a theoretical model in which these dynamics emerge endogenously. Assuming differences in the degree of utility substitution between consumption and rearing children across countries generates all three components of these dynamics.

The impact of the labour market on the timing of marriage and births in Spain

This paper investigates how education and the labour market affect Spanish individual decisions on the timing of marriage and births, using a Cox hazard approach. It disentangles men and women, and two groups, Cohort 1945–1960 and Cohort 1961–1977. Results show that female employment delays marriage in Cohort 1945–1960, but it has a reverse effect in Cohort 1961–1977. We also find evidence that employment is a barrier for family formation since employed women postpone births in both cohorts. The precarious Spanish labour markets, captured by female unemployment rates, delay family formation, especially by putting off marriage. Male unemployment, at the individual level, impacts negatively on fertility only through delaying marriage.