Spousal agreement on the value of children and fertility behavior

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the level of spousal agreement on the value of children and fertility behavior. Interviews with 441 once married couples from a probability sample in Robeson County, North Carolina, provide the data for testing the hypothesized relationships. The results indicate that the level of spousal agreement on the value of children is significantly related to live births, family size expectations and fertility planning. The introduction of duration of marriage and wife's education as controls did not significantly alter these relationships. An important implication of the findings is the need for research on the family formation process to focus on both the husband and wife.Paper No. 11446 of the Journal Series of the North Carolina Agricultural Research Service, Raleigh, North Carolina. The research for this study was initially supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1 ROLH005321-02).     

Factors related to the intention to have additional children in the United States: A reanalysis of data from the 1965 and 1970 national fertility studies

Reproductive intentions of white mothers with no more than three children in 1965 and in 1970 were analyzed for their stability and change with respect to such factors as parity, age of the youngest child, wife’s employment, and husband’s education. Parity and age of the youngest child were found to have a much more important effect on the intent to have additional children than were such socioeconomic variables as wife’s employment and husband’s education. Parity and the interval since the latest birth (or the age of the youngest child) were found to have a nonlinear effect and to interact in affecting the reproductive intention. This suggests a convergence to a twochild family as the threshold size and that the length of childspacing is contingent on the parity. Change during 1965–1970 in this direction was found to be greater among mothers with husbands having college or higher educations.     

Changes in motivation for parenthood among young married couples

The perceived satisfactions, costs, and overall motivation associated with having a first or second child was assessed at two time points for 507 married couples. Motivation associated with parenthood varied systematically over time and was influenced by attainment of cultural fertility norms and the impact of a birth. Among those who experienced a birth between Times 1 and 2, couples who already had a child showed a much greater drop in motivation for a future child than did initially childless couples. Husbands perceived lower costs associated with an additional child than did wives.This research was supported by NICHD Center for Population Research Contract No. HD 52807 and Research Scientist Development Award No. AA00002 from NIAAA to the author. The important contributions of Philip Bardsley to this research and to earlier drafts of this paper are gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are also due to Tom Day and Linda Moody Chilingar for their data analytic and statistical skills and to Cathey Heron for her assistance throughout the course of this project.     

Daddy months

We consider a bargaining model in which husband and wife decide on the allocation of time and disposable income, and fertility. Since her bargaining power would go down otherwise more strongly, the wife agrees to have a child only if the husband also leaves the labor market for a while. The daddy months subsidy enables the couple to overcome a hold-up problem and thereby improves efficiency. However, the same ruling harms other types of couples and may also reduce welfare in an endogenous taxation framework.     

Income and fertility: The elusive relationship

This paper uses longitudinal data for 1962–1977 to examine the relationship of husband’s income to 1962 expected fertility, to final parity, and to the discrepancy between initial expectations and final parity, separately for four groups of women who in 1962 either had just given birth to a first, second, or fourth child or had just been married. Although economic reasons frequently were cited in 1977 for downward revisions in family size goals, husband’s income was not positively related to fertility in three of the four parity groups. For the merged sample, excluding women with unwanted births, husband’s income showed a small positive relationship to completed fertility.     

Do husbands and wives agree? Fertility attitudes and later behavior

Analysis of the extent to which husbands and wives agree in their attitudes toward a number of key issues that may affect fertility behavior shows that although aggregate views of men and women are remarkably similar, marital couples are frequently in disagreement, particularly if measures discounting for chance agreement of responses are employed. In other words, we cannot accept either the husband or the wife as a surrogate respondent. These conclusions are based on data from cross-sectional surveys in a developing society, Taiwan, of 2000 couples in which the wife was of childbearing age. The impact on fertility of such marital disagreement varies with the attitude in question. Followup birth data over a four-year period indicate that, when there is disagreement, it is the wife's attitude that has more influence on fertility, particularly if she has the stronger belief about the future security and status to be derived from a large family and from sons.The data for this paper were collected by the Taiwan Provincial Institute of Family Planning under the direction of T.S. Sun, in collaboration with the University of Michigan Population Studies Center and with the financial assistance of the Population Council. Grants from the Center for Population Research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Ford Foundation provided support for the analysis. We wish to acknowledge the assistance of James B. Rogers in the computer work and of Ronald Freedman in comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Expectations of additional children by race,parity, and selected socio-economic characteristics,United States: 1967

This is a study of fertility expectations of wives in relation to selected demographic and social and economic characteristics. The data for this study were obtained from a special survey conducted in 1967 from a probability sample of 30,000 households. The analyzed data show that the number of children expected in the next five years is inversely related to parity. Because of the inverse relationship, the expectations of additional children tend to be inversely related to age at marriage of wife, number of years married, and similar temporal variables. The data show also that there exists an inverse relationship between expectations of additional children and selected socio-economic characteristics, such as education of wife, occupation, and income of husband.     

A theoretical analysis of antecedents of young couples’ fertility decisions and outcomes

Longitudinal survey data from 509 couples who at Time 1 interview had recently married or had their first child did not support the hypothesis that demographic factors influence fertility intentions, decisions, and outcomes only indirectly through their effects on attitudes and motivations. Husbands’ and wives’ attitudes exerted reciprocal influence on one another. However, while husbands’ sex-role traditionalism and motivation for parenthood strongly influenced wives’ traditionalism and motivation in the case of recently married couples, this pattern was reversed for riew parents. Birth control use was directly affected by wives’ fertility intentions, but not by husbands’ intentions. Difficulties in examining couple interaction variables such as relative power and the possible limitations of fitting these data to a complex theoretical model using LISREL are discussed.     

Son preference and the demand for additional children in pakistan

This paper tries to take into account the sequential element in fertility decisions and continues an investigation originally begun by Namboodiri. We examine the extent to which the “desire to have additional children” can be explained by a variety of economic, sociological, and demographic variables. The probit maximum likelihood estimation procedure is utilized, and the analysis is based on cross-sectional data on 2,910 currently married women obtained from a national survey conducted in Pakistan in 1968–1969. The principal finding is the presence of a strong son preference both for the husband and for the wife.     

Changes in fertility expectations and preferences between 1962 and 1977: Their relation to final parity

Changing fertility expectations and preferences from 1962 to 1977 are compared with final parity in a longitudinal study. Results are strongly affected by initial parity in 1962. Final parity, 27 percent below expectations for those initially childless, illustrates the effect for couples free to change expectations downward of declining fertility preferences. Changes in expectations early in marriage had a significant long-term effect on final parity, as did early differences between wife’s expectations and husband’s preferences. Unplanned births increased final parity significantly. Religion, education, and income had no systematic relation to the discrepancy between initial expectations and final parity.     

Individual and couple intentions for more children: A research note

The question, “Do you and your husband intend to have a (another) child?” has become standard on fertility surveys. It is almost always asked of the wife, but is treated as the couple’s joint intention. How reasonable is such an assumption? Do husbands’ and wives’ reports of couple intent correspond closely? Do spouses know the fertility wishes of their partners? Do they take these wishes into account when reporting couple intent? Analysis of a sample of fecund, white, urban U.S. couples shows each question answered affirmatively. Reports from either spouse appear to be good, although admittedly imperfect, indicators of couple intent.     

Fertility desires and fertility: Hers,his, and theirs

The relationship between desired and achieved fertility may be misspecified by excluding husbands' fertility desires or by confounding effects of shared desires with the resolution of conflicting desires. Using couple data from the classic Princeton Fertility Surveys, we find relatively large husband effects on fertility outcomes as well as unique effects of spousal disagreement. Wives and husbands were equally likely to achieve fertility desires, and disagreeing couples experienced fertility rates midway between couples who wanted the same smaller or larger number of children. These conditions do not hold, however, when we include willingness to delay births for economic mobility as part of the measure of fertility desires. Among couples who both wanted a third child, only husbands' willingness to delay births had significant negative effects on birth rates.     

初婚夫妇年龄差的特点、变动趋势及分析——以北京为例

利用北京市2004～2009年的婚姻登记数据,对近年来初婚夫妇年龄差的特点和变动趋势进行考察,并探讨其影响因素。研究发现,近年来北京市初婚夫妇的平均年龄差为1.87岁,"男大女小"仍是主流的婚龄匹配模式,但由于"妻大于夫"的夫妇数量的增多和大年龄差距的"夫大于妻"的情况的减少,夫妇年龄差呈逐渐缩小的态势。女性初婚年龄的推迟、女性教育文化水平的不断提升及其与男性学历差距的缩小、城市化进程的不断推进等,均使夫妇年龄差趋于缩小。这些发现有助于我们了解当前大城市的婚配状况和发展态势,并为进一步的深入研究提供依据。     

甘肃省人口婚姻意愿调查分析

本文利用问卷调查数据,分析了甘肃省居民婚姻意愿现状,主要对择偶标准、期望初婚年龄、期望夫妻年龄差和期望婚居模式四个方面进行分析。调查发现,甘肃男性择偶时较看重身体健康,甘肃女性择偶时较看重经济收入;甘肃居民的平均初婚年龄逐步提高;绝大多数居民期望婚姻中丈夫的年龄大于妻子,且倾向于男大于女1-2岁;从夫居和独立居住是普遍接受的婚居模式。虽然现代婚姻观对甘肃居民有一定影响,但是这里的婚姻观仍较传统。     

Interaction and family planning in the french urban family

During the last two years, a survey about interaction in the couple has been conducted among 550 urban families in France by the National Center for Scientific Research, with the assistance of the United States Public Health Service. The data given here are relative to the importance of the couple's interaction in the realization of family planning goals.These data are used to answer the question, are socioeconomic variables (husband's level of education, occupation, and income, for example) more closely correlated with the success of the couple's family planning than are the variables of positive interaction (agreement, communication, and equality in decision-making, for example)?While the Indianapolis study has not answered this question, the Puerto Rican study has shown that freedom of the wife and communication between spouses were more closely connected with the success of family planning than were the husband's level of education or income. But, one might think that this result was linked to the Puerto Rican sample, in which the levels of income and education were generally low.The French survey, undertaken with a random sample stratified according to the socioeconomic level of the husband, shows that this last hypothesis is not true. Just as in the Puerto Rican study, the factors of positive interaction in the couple are more closely associated with the success of family planning-particularly with the eradication of excessive fertility-than with socioeconomic variables. These results show the importance of the couple's education as a determining factor in a successful family planning program.     

The Effect of Parental Education on Marital Fertility in Developing Countries

The effects of parents' education on marital fertility are analysed with data from 38 Surveys in the WFS programme, and a two-parameter model in which the age-dependent level of fertility and a duration-dependent slope of fertility are estimated. The level parameter reflects post-partum infecundity and, in some populations, contraceptive spacing of births. The slope parameter reflects parity-specific birth control. The effects of the husband's and of the wife's education are estimated, both before and after adjustment for other socio-economic factors. The schooling of the wife emerges as a more decisive influence on fertility than that of the husband, with substantial net effects even after controlling for urban-rural residence, husband's socio-economic status and wife's employment. In Latin America and the Arab states, monotonic declines in marital fertility are found, as the level of the wife's education increases. However, in many Asian and African populations, the highest fertility is observed among women with moderate exposure to schooling, because the relaxation of traditional spacing mechanisms is not matched by increased birth control. This regional diversity cannot be explained convincingly by national levels of economic development or efforts made to popularize contraception, but appears to relect ill-understood cultural factors.     

The timing of falls into poverty after retirement and widowhood

A major concern of workers, even those financially prepared for retirement, is that a small risk of poverty may grow over time. Cross-sectional data showing that older cohorts have higher poverty rates substantiate this concern. Using data from the Retirement History Study, we analyze changes in the hazard of entering poverty as a cohort of elderly couples retire and age and the wives are widowed. The initial fall into poverty among those who were not poor before the husband retired is more closely linked to the event of retirement or widowhood than to the slowly eroding household income over the period of retirement and widowhood. The death of her retired husband puts a wife in economic jeopardy whether this shock occurs one year after his retirement or some years later.     

Unmet need for couples: An analytical framework and evaluation with DHS data

While estimates of unmet need continue to be an important measure of the extent of demand for contraception and family planning programs success in developing countries, there are various reservations about the validity of these estimates. For instance, the traditional formulation of the measurement has relied solely on information from women while inferences from the findings are often drawn for couples. As more survey data have become available for both men and women in a number of countries, there is increasing evidence suggesting that husbands' preferences are indeed important determinants of the reproductive behavior of couples. This paper developsan analytical framework for measuring unmet need for couples. The approach: (1) takes a fresh look at the classification of pregnant and amenorrheic women, and (2) incorporates the contraceptive use and fertility preferences of husband and wife in estimating the level of unmet need in six sub-Saharan African countries. Our findings shows that taking these factors into account results in a 50 to 66 percent reduction in the level of unmet need in these countries. The importance of husbands' variables in determining the level of unmet need is clearly evident when examined among fecund couples in which the wife is neither pregnant nor amenorrheic. The implications of these findings for family planning programs and research are discussed.     

The effects of income level,income distribution,education and urbanization on fertility rates among 28 administrative regions of China

Conflicting empirical evidence on the role of income distribution on fertility rates is the impetus for this 1982 study of providence-specific Chinese Census data, excluding Tibet. The findings support the prior thesis of Repetto but utilize the micromethods and per household income measures of the competing findings of Boulier. It is cautioned that in the Chinese analysis equal income distribution depresses fertility, but China may not reflect world wide patterns. China did not have until recently a market incentive system, and there are income measurement problems. The data are per capita economic output not per capita income, and those high output areas which did not produce low fertility may actually have had households with low incomes. The importance of this research is in establishing that cross-province data are a useful tool in understanding the influence of income distribution on fertility. As with most developing countries, women's education, for instance, at least junior high education explained the largest variation of fertility differences among the 28 provinces. The urbanization variable when controlling for income was positive, unlike the other developing countries. The 1949 Chinese government's spatial industrial policy encouraged urbanization and industrialization in rural areas and family planning programs such that highly urbanized provinces have low population density. A variety of variables on income level, income distribution, education, and urbanization are discussed. OLSQ regressions were generated utilizing such independent variables as output per capita in yuan (YOUTHPC80), the square of YOUTHPC80 (YOUTHPC802), YOUTHPC80 multiplied by the average family size in each province (YOUTHPH80), and the squared value of YOUTHPH80.