A Theory of Marital Fertility Transition

In this paper a theory of marital fertility transition that treats birth control diffusion processes and the effects of mortality decline and economic and social development on fertility within a common analytical framework is developed. Utility-cost concepts provide the means for an integrated treatment. Family size utility functions are used and the theory is focused on the effects of development and diffusion on the utilities and costs of alternative family sizes. The principal innovation lies in the conceptualization and analysis of diffusion of birth control, in which the psychic costs of violating social norms against birth control play a central role. When norms shift in favour of birth control, the psychic costs of birth control fall, causing a decline in the demand for children. In highly integrated populations this process can occur very rapidly, resulting in rapid diffusion of birth control and sudden and rapid fertility decline.     

New Cohort Fertility Forecasts for the Developed World: Rises,Falls, and Reversals

With period fertility having risen in many low‐fertility countries, an important emerging question is whether cohort fertility trends are also reversing. We produce new estimates of cohort fertility for 37 developed countries using a new, simple method that avoids the underestimation typical of previous approaches. Consistent with the idea that timing changes were largely responsible for the last decades' low period fertility, we find that family size has remained considerably higher than the period rates of 1.5 in many “low‐fertility” countries, averaging about 1.8 children. Our forecasts suggest that the long‐term decline in cohort fertility is flattening or reversing in many world regions previously characterized by low fertility. We document the marked increase of cohort fertility in the English‐speaking world and in Scandinavia; signs of an upward reversal in many low‐fertility countries, including Japan and Germany; and continued declines in countries such as Taiwan and Portugal. We include in our forecasts estimates of statistical uncertainty and the possible effects of the recent economic recession.     

Approaches to the Fertility Transition in Victorian England

The secular decline of marital fertility which took place in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century England and Wales is considered by using a number of approaches. Among the theoretical approaches considered are those of transition models, and social diffusion. The former overemphasises the role of industrialization and urbanization; the latter is inappropriate when dealing with the development of a small-family ideal in Victorian society. Explanations of fertility decline using ecological and time-series analysis are considered. The registration districts of England and Wales provide the framework for analyses of spatial variations in marital fertility and its correlates in 1861, 1891 and 1911. A time-series analysis attempts to establish the sequential nature of social, economic and demographic changes during the sixty years preceding the First World War. The following points are emphasised in conclusion. The Victorian fertility transition was not directly related to the development of an urban-industrial society, the social diffusion of family ideals or the use of appliance methods of contraception. But its immediate cause was probably linked to the substantial increase in family planning literature available from the 1870s, and the challenge that this posed to the tradition of unlimited marital fertility. This critical change in social attitudes to family planning was facilitated both by developments in mass education and, ultimately by the decline of infant mortality.     

Second Births and the Second Shift: A Research Note on Gender Equity and Fertility

In a set of propositions on fertility transition, Peter McDonald recently proposed that the decline from replacement‐level fertility to low fertility is associated with a combination of high levels of gender equity in individual‐oriented institutions, such as education and market employment, and low levels of gender equity in the family and family‐oriented institutions. Similarly, the “second shift,” or the share of domestic work performed by formally employed women, forms a critical piece of current cross‐national explanations for low fertility. Building on this scholarship, the authors explore whether there is empirical evidence at the individual level for a relationship between gender equity at home, as indicated by the division of housework among working couples with one child, and the transition to a second birth. Results, based on a sample of US couples, indicate a U‐shaped relationship between gender equity and fertility. Both the most modern and the most traditional housework arrangements are positively associated with fertility. This empirical test elaborates the family‐fertility relationship and underscores the need to incorporate family context, including gender equity, into explanations for fertility change.     

Land cover change and fertility in West-Central Africa: rural livelihoods and the vicious circle model

The vicious circle argument, rooted in a neo-Malthusian tradition, states that resource scarcity increases the demand for child labor and leads to higher fertility. The rural livelihood framework, on the other hand, contends that households employ multiple strategies, only one of which involves adjusting their fertility levels as a response to environmental pressures. This study provides a unique test of both theories by examining the relationship between land cover change and fertility across hundreds of rural communities in four West-Central African countries. The findings reveal a complex relationship between natural capital and fertility. In communities where natural capital was initially low, a further decline in that capital is associated with both higher fertility preferences and levels. However, we find that fertility preferences and behavior are often discordant, with notable within-community differences in response to decline in natural capital across levels of household wealth.     

The effects of migrant remittances on population–environment dynamics in migrant origin areas: international migration, fertility, and consumption in highland Guatemala

International migration impacts origin regions in many ways. As examples, remittances from distant migrants may alter consumption patterns within sending communities, while exposure to different cultural norms may alter other behaviors. This paper combines these insights to offer a unique lens on migration’s environmental impact. From an environmental perspective, we ask the following question: is the likely rise in consumption brought about by remittances counterbalanced by a reduction in fertility in migrant households following exposure to lower fertility cultures? Based on ethnographic case studies in two western highland Guatemalan communities, we argue that the near-term rise in consumption due to remittances is not counterbalanced by rapid decline in migrant household fertility. However, over time, the environmental cost of consumption may be mitigated at the community level through diffusion of contraception and family planning norms yielding lower family size.     

How Do Education and Family Planning Accelerate Fertility Decline?

Education and family planning can both be influenced by policy and are thought to accelerate fertility decline. However, questions remain about the nature of these effects. Does the effect of education operate through increasing educational attainment of women or educational enrollment of children? At which educational level is the effect strongest? Does the effect of family planning operate through increasing contraceptive prevalence or reducing unmet need? Is education or family planning more important? We assessed the quantitative impact of education and family planning in high-fertility settings using a regression framework inspired by Granger causality. We found that women's attainment of lower secondary education is key to accelerating fertility decline and found an accelerating effect of contraceptive prevalence for modern methods. We found the impact of contraceptive prevalence to be substantially larger than that of education. These accelerating effects hold in sub-Saharan Africa, but with smaller effect sizes there than elsewhere.     

Evolution of fertility and mortality

Historical and current fertility trends in both Quebec and Canada as a whole are surveyed. While fertility among French Canadians was higher than that in neighboring provinces until the mid-20th century, in 1968 Quebec's crude birthrate was the lowest in Canada, and in 1972 it was 13.8 vs. 15.9 (the national birthrate). This reversal is explained in terms of the demographic transition theory, the declining influence of organized religion, and new opportunities for social mobility for minority groups. The birthrate throughout Canada is also declining. Although recent cohort studies are incomplete because women have not yet finished their reproductive years, it appears that completed family size will be lower than at any time in Canadian history. The period total fertility rate indicates an average family size of 1.8 children in 1976, but it is unclear whether this represents an actual reduction in family size or the postponement of childbearing. The sharpest fertility decline has been among women aged 35-49, but peak fertility rates have shifted from the 20-24 age group to those aged 25-29. Fertility is negatively related to education, and the lowest fertility is found among the intermediate income groups. Since the 1969 lifting of the ban on contraceptive sales and advertising, family planning activities have been stepped up. Also removed was the total ban on abortion. In 1975 there were 14.9 therapeutic abortions per 100 live births, but it has been charged that abortion standards are being applied inequitably from hospital to hospital.     

Intended and Ideal Family Size in the United States, 1970–2002

Cross‐nationally, observed fertility is well below mean levels of reported ideal family size and also usually well below survey respondents' fertility desires and intentions. The United States is an exception. In this article we: (1) discuss the importance of fertility ideals and intentions for understanding observed fertility levels, (2) propose a model that can account for variable attitude‐behavior consistency, and (3) use this model as a framework to examine trends in American women's fertility ideals, intentions, and actual fertility. Our study uses data from the General Social Surveys and the Current Population Surveys. We ask whether preferences and intentions for moderate family sizes have eroded with time. The answer is remarkably clear: the dominant American ideals and intentions are for two or three children, and these preferences have persisted across the last three decades. The unusual aggregate correspondence between fertility intentions and behavior in the United States is explained by an apparent offsetting of factors that increase/decrease fertility relative to intentions.     

Spatial Analysis of the Causes of Fertility Decline in Prussia

This article contributes to the geographic analysis of fertility decline in the demographic transition in Europe. We reanalyze Galloway, Hammel, and Lee's (1994) Prussian data with spatial analysis methods. Our multivariate analysis provides evidence of the predictive effect of both economic and cultural variables. Furthermore, even after all of the observable economic, social, and cultural variables have been controlled for, our findings show that a significant unexplained geographic clustering of fertility decline remains. We then specify spatial econometric models, which show that in addition to economic and cultural factors, socio‐geographic factors such as being adjacent to areas of sharp fertility decline are also needed to understand the pattern of fertility decline. These results provide new support for the role of social diffusion in the process, while allowing for the direct structural effects of economic change.     

Population in Literature

The treatment of population issues in modern fiction is examined under three headings: fear of population decline, fear of population excess, and fear of population professionals. Writings on population decline cover both the depopulation caused by too‐low fertility and science‐fictional scenarios of natural or human‐made demographic catastrophes. Population excess is chiefly portrayed through ecological dystopias, but includes also depictions of unchecked immigration from poor to rich countries. Population professionals as fictional protagonists range from villainous biomedical and social engineers to feckless family planning workers.     

Family limitation and the fertility transition: Evidence from the age patterns of fertility in Europe and Asia

Summary The age patterns of marital fertility levels and decline in modern Asia and historical Europe are analysed in order to answer two questions: (1) How closely do the age patterns of marital fertility in both areas prior to a systematic fertility decline conform to the age pattern of natural fertility? (2) How similar are the age patterns of the fertility transition experienced in Europe in the past, and the age pattern of fertility decline now under way in a number of Asian populations? The answers have important implications for our understanding of the fertility transition. They suggest that modern family limitation (i.e. parity-specific fertility control) was largely absent prior to a secular decline in marital fertility in both Europe and Asia. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that once the practice of family limitation starts to spread among the broader strata of the population, it seems almost inevitably to increase until it becomes a common behavioural norm. In this respect, the modern fertility transition appears to result from the spread of innovative behaviour and cannot be viewed simply as an adjustment to new socio-economic circumstances based on previously established behavioural mechanisms.     

Perspectives on family and fertility in developing countries

Abstract Two aspects of the family in relation to fertility in developing countries are discussed: set stratification within the family and extended family networks. As both these are central to J. C. Caldwell's theory of fertility transition, the paper is structured as a critique of his position. Drawing on examples and data from Asia, it is argued that the causal significance of sex stratification for fertility lies in the economic risks it imposes on women, deriving from their dependence on men, rather than, as Caldwell suggests, in the disproportionate gain that men derive from their dominant position within families. While Caldwell and others associate strong extended family networks of mutual obligation and support with persistent high fertility, it is argued here that such systems should, instead, facilitate fertility decline. Close-knit and strong kin networks can be viewed as alternatives to children as sources of insurance, and may facilitate fertility decline by preventing children from becoming the focal point of parental concerns for security.     

Explanations of the fertility crisis in modern societies: A search for commonalities

Near‐global fertility decline began in the 1960s, and from the 1980s an increasing number of European countries and some Asian ones achieved very low fertility (total fertility below 1.5) with little likelihood of completed cohort fertility reaching replacement level. Earlier theory aiming at explaining this phenomenon stressed the incompatibility between post‐industrial society and behaviour necessary for population replacement. Recent theory has been more specific, often concentrating on the current Italian or Spanish situations or on the contrast between them and the situation in either Scandinavia or the English‐speaking countries, or both. Such an approach ignores important evidence, especially that from German‐speaking populations. The models available concentrate on welfare systems and family expenses, omitting circumstances that may be unique to individual countries or longer‐term factors that may be common to all.     

Is a significant socio-economic structural change a pre-requisite for "inital" fertility decline in the LDCs? Evidence from Thailand based on a multivariate cointegration / vector error correction modelling approach

This study is the first attempt at placing the analysis of fertility in a temporal dynamic framework in the case of a developing Asian economy such as Thailand by binding the relationship between fertility and its determinants within a cointegrated system. The analysis is based on the application of the following recently developed dynamic time series techniques: cointegration, vector error-correction modelling, variance decompositions and the impulse response functions. The results tend to indicate that in the complex dynamic interactions, the importance of the conventional `structural' hypothesis as a significant factor in bringing fertility down in the longer term cannot be denied. However, in the short to longer term, our findings, although not fully supportive of any particular hypothesis, appear to be broadly consistent more with the hypothesis emphasising the critical role played by the `ideational' or diffusion forces along with the demographic variables in ensuring `initial' fertility decline than with the conventional `structural' hypothesis emphasising a significant socio-economic structural change as a pre-condition for `initial' fertility decline. Received: 7 April 1995/Accepted: 15 May 1998     

中国农村居民家庭的生育决策模型与实证分析

根据"五普"和"六普"资料,人口总和生育率显著低于世代更替水平,这表明中国人口进入了低生育水平发展阶段。关于这一问题的合理解释是除了计划生育政策影响外,农村家庭生育决策的变化可能是内生的重要影响因素。基于生育决策模型及实证分析,得出这样的结论:在土地量保持不变的条件下,农村居民家庭的生育决策主要取决于收入水平和抚养子女的成本。农村居民家庭可能会依据"量质权衡"减少生育子女,这可能是导致中国人口生育水平下降的根本原因。     

Are there crisis-led fertility declines? Evidence from central Cameroon

Past demographic transitions have beenobserved with and without economic progress, but thereis little empirical record of crisis-driven fertilitytransitions. In recent years, several authors haveargued that conditions for such transitions are met inAfrican countries under economic crisis and structuraladjustment. Using retrospective family histories,this study examines fertility responses to crisis inCameroon, a country with a particularly abrupteconomic reversal. The thesis of a crisis-led declineis tested on the basis of five criteria includingtiming of the decline, statistical and substantivesignificance, rural-urban response differentials andsocial salience. Findings are consistent with acrisis-led effect.     

Change of marital fertility in China from 1964 to 1981]

In 1982 the Chinese National Family Planning Commission conducted a nationwide (excepting Taiwan and Tibet) .001 random sampling of the total population to gather data on the fertility and age structures of married women. In comparing general marital fertility and standardized fertility, findings show that from 1964 to 1970 both rates averaged 225.1/1000. When family planning work began on a wide scale in 1971, the rates steadily declined, reaching 116.7/1000 in 1980. However, in 1967-68 the standard fertility rate rose by 21.34% due to the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, and in 1980-81 the rate increased by 13.2%, indicating that problems still remain in family planning. The total marital fertility rate dropped 2.84/1000 from 1964 to 1981. The rate of decline in rural areas was greater than in the cities, but the cities had a larger percentage decline than the countryside. In the 5-year periods of 1965, 1970, 1975, and 1980, marital fertility rates tended to decline in 1970 and 1975 among women aged 30-40 years because during those periods greater control was placed on women having multiple children. For 1980 and 1975, combined total rates for 15-19 year olds dropped 17.1%, but the combined total rates of 30-49 year olds dropped by 61.2%, indicating that in recent years the drop in marital fertility is mostly among those over 30 years of age.     

Explaining fertility transitions

In this essay. I suggest that the crisis in our understanding of fertility transitions is more apparent than real. Although most existing theories of fertility transition have been partially or wholly discredited, this reflects a tendency to assume that all fertility transitions share one or two causes, to ignore mortality decline as a precondition for fertility decline, to assume that pretransitional fertility is wholly governed by social constraints rather than by individual decision-making. and to test ideas on a decadal time scale. I end the essay by suggesting a perceptual. interactive approach to explaining fertility transitions that is closely allied to existing theories but focuses on conditions that lead couples to switch from postnatal to prenatal controls on family size.     

Social and economic factors in Hong Kong's fertility decline

Abstract In both developed and underdeveloped areas, many attempts have been made to alter the course of fertility through family planning intervention. Doubtless the availability of such services facilitates birth control for those who already desire to use it. Whether or not such exogenous interventions have any independent effect upon the operation of endogenous forces in the economy and society is, however, more problematical. Where fertility declines have been observed, family planning services have often been made widely available only after the decline in fertility had already set in. Nonetheless, observers have often attempted to attribute some fraction of the continuing decline in fertility to the operation of family planning activities. One especially notable case is that of Hong Kong, which provides some of the more persuasive evidence about the independent effects of family planning intervention.