The effect of income on fertility

Abstract Cross-sectional data and long-period time series data have generally shown an inverse relationship between income and fertility. But short-period time series data over the business cycle have shown a direct relationship. The first part of this paper resolves this apparent paradox by showing that it arises from a statistical illusion-specification bias due to omitted lagged variables. The second part of the paper then considers the likely unconditional effect of income on fertility in several sorts of situations: (a) secular income increase in less developed countries; (b) cyclical income change in industrialized countries; (c) secular income increase in industrialized countries; and (d) incentive payments for higher and lower fertility.     

The conflicting effects of delayed marriage and declining divorce rates on cumulative fertility in Indonesia

The impact of nuptiality patterns on fertility in Indonesia is examined with multivariate analysis controlling for 8 socioeconomic variables. Data were obtained from the 1987 Indonesian Contraceptive Prevalence Survey. Marriage is usually universal by age 35, and in this study all women 30 years had been married at least once. 20% were married at 15 years and 45% married at 18 years. For those married more than once, prevalence of 1st marriage was 7% for women 15-24 years, 15% for 25-34 years, and 29% for 35-49 years. In 1976 and 1987, the age at 1st marriage and number of times married were both strongly and negatively correlated. The % never marrying between 15-49 years rose from 21.5% to 26.4% between 1980-87. Cumulative fertility w as related to both age at 1st marriage and number of times married. Muslim women, women in Java and Bali, and rural women all marry at younger ages. 27% of the variance in age at 1st marriage is explained by women aged 25-34, current residence, region, religion, language, education, and work or not before marriage. The number of times married is also associated with socioeconomic characteristics without control, i.e., Muslim women 25-34 years were 3 times more likely to have been married more than once than in other faiths. With controls for socioeconomic factors, only 13% of the variance is explained and being Muslim has no statistically significant effect. The important net effects were being interviewed in Balinese, age, and age at 1st marriage. In the analysis of cumulative fertility, age at 1st marriage consistently is related to cumulative fertility in almost every socioeconomic group when age and number of times married is controlled for. Women married more than once have lower fertility. 36% of the variance is explained by all the variables. Being married more than once leads to having 2.1 fewer children. A 5-year delay in marriage leads to .75-1.1 fewer children. When other variables are controlled for, neither educational level nor prior work experience has a statistically significant effect on cumulative fertility. In the contraception analysis, women married more than once used contraception less. Among women 35-49, those marrying later had higher contraceptive use, but in general contraceptive use declined with age. More information is needed on why marriage patterns are changing.     

The dependent tax exemption,abortion availability,and US fertility rates

The impact of the personal income tax dependent exemption, abortion availability, and other factors on fertility rates is analyzed. US time series data for 1915–88 are used in the empirical model. The results indicate that greater abortion availability in the USA is associated with lower fertility. A higher value of the dependent exemption generally is associated with higher fertility, but the magnitude and significance of the effect is sensitive to specification choice. The results suggest that restricting abortion availability in the USA will increase the fertility rate, but a change in the tax value of the dependent exemption will have a less predictable impact on fertility.     

An empirical study of the effects of socioeconomic development on fertility rates

Recent studies by Adelman and by Friedlander and Silver, which have investigated whether regression equations derived from cross-section data can be used to predict the impact of socioeconomic development on changing levels of fertility, are reviewed critically. Regression analyses based on data for 57 countries c. 1960 show that fertility (gross reproduction rate) varies cross-sectionally with region as well as with level of development (as measured by per capita income, percent labor force in primary sector, expectation of life, illiteracy rate). Using equations derived from the cross-section study and time-series data for five European countries during the period that their fertility rates fell, it is shown that predictions about past fertility changes are in error. The results suggest caution in the use of cross-section relations to predict the course of fertility in developing countries.     

中国西部民族地区的人口生育与死亡状况浅析

西部民族地区包括中国少数民族人口最集中的8个省区,少数民族人口占全国少数民族人口的63.41%。受到这些地区本身历史的、自然的、民族的、以及社会经济发展水平等多种因素影响,其人口状况也表现为与中国中、东部很大的不同,具有自身显著的独特性。本文通过对历次人口普查资料和有关统计数据的分析,对中国西部民族地区的人口变动以及自然增长状况进行了系统地分析,得出了一些有意义的结论。     

基于灰色关联的我国人口就业结构、产业结构与城市化水平研究

本文从人口就业结构、产业结构及城市化水平的演进趋势入手,采用灰色关联分析的方法,分析了人口就业结构与城市化水平、人口就业结构与产业结构之间的关系,结果表明:城市化水平的提高和产业结构层次的提升对于我国人口就业结构都能产生积极的影响,并据此提出相应的对策建议。     

Womens education and diffusion of the fertility transition: The case of Egypt 1960–1996 in 4905 administrative subdivisions

Egypt comprises thousands of small geographic units. Total fertility rates are reconstructed for the 4905qism, qarya, medina, markaz andshiyakhat covering non-desert Egypt at the 1960, 1976, 1986 and 1996 censuses. This fine spatial scale reveals that heterogeneity across subdivisions increased during the fertility transition, illustrating the rapidity of change. Spatial patterns appear in the fertility upsurge of 1974–85, which is accompanied by a large but temporary reduction in heterogeneity. Fertility varies greatly between subdivisions and geographic differentials underlie the expected and observed association between fertility, literacy, family transfers and industrialization. Cairo led the decline of fertility, but that decline is counterbalanced by rapid economic growth and persistently high levels of illiteracy. A similar pattern of fertility change is observed for the chief city of the Muhafaza and its surrounding area. Egypt presents an archetype of demographic transition as improved economic and educational status diffuses across the country, moderated by its specific geography.     

The effects of temperature on human fertility

Monthly birth and temperature data for a variety of states and countries are used to estimate the effect of short-run temperature fluctuations on fertility. Regressions of monthly births on a flexible specification of lagged monthly temperature show that temperature has quantitatively important effects on both seasonal and nonseasonal variation in births. Summer temperature extremes reduce conceptions in the southern United States, explaining a substantial part of the observed seasonal birth pattern. Extreme cold shows no evidence of affecting conceptions. The results also show significant seasonality in births even after accounting for temperature. Controls for monthly temperature do not explain the persistent spring peak in births in northern Europe. This finding suggests that other factors play an important role.     

我国区域城市化发展水平的差异分析

全国第五次人口普查 31个省区的主要数据表明 ,我国的人口城市化水平存在着显著的地区差异。人口数量的变动特点与生产力发展水平 ,特别是人均GDP和投资 ,有着密切的关系。此外 ,统计口径的变化也是一个重要的影响因素。     

Changes in fertility rates and family size in response to changes in age at marriage, the trend away from arranged marriages, and increasing urbanization

Abstract Demographers have proposed a long list of factors that help explain why population growth and fertility rates respond to rising levels of urbanization, economic growth and national development.(2) Two of the many suggested influences will be investigated in the present paper with regard to urban Hong Kong.     

设市的战略布局与我国城市化的地区差异

城市化是一个极其复杂的过程 ,其影响机制很多 ,但是我国政府干预是城市化地区差异产生的一个非常重要的因素。政府通过干预经济产生地区差异 ,间接影响城市化发展 ;通过干预城市设置 ,进行设市战略布局的调整 ,直接影响我国城市化水平地区差异     

Nonmarital childbearing: Influences of education,marriage, and fertility

We examined the determinants of nonmarital fertility, focusing on the effects of other life-course events: education, marriage, marital dissolution, and marital fertility. Since these determinants are potentially endogenous, we modeled the processes that generate them jointly with nonmarital fertility and accounted for the sequencing of events and the unobserved correlations across processes. The results showed that the risk of nonmarital conception increases immediately after leaving school and that the educational effects are less pronounced for black women than for other women. The risk is lower for previously married women than for never-married women, even controlling for age, but this reduction is significant only for black women. The more children a woman already has, the lower her risk of nonmarital childbearing, particularly if the earlier children were born during a previous marriage. Ignoring endogeneity issues seriously biases the estimates of several substantively important effects.     

The effects of gender control on fertility and children's consumption

Effects of sex preference on investments in children‘s human capital, bequests and fertility are studied, with and without sex selection, in a model based on parental altruism. Both pure sex preference, a feature of the parental utility function, and indirect preference, which arises from gender-related differences in earnings opportunities, are examined. When there is no gender control the impact of pure sex preference is seen in smaller consumption for daughters than for sons. However, when gender control is exerted, sex preference raises the sex ratio and it is possible that sisters may, on average, consume no less than their more numerous brothers. In an example of the model with specific functional forms, parents who practise gender control have larger families than if sex selection techniques were unavailable. The effect is magnified if sons‘ earnings opportunities are better than daughters‘. JEL classification: D11, J13, J16 Received August 31, 1995 / Accepted May 2, 1996     

The impact of school entry laws on female education and teenage fertility

The literature on school entry laws in the USA suggests that school entry laws affect educational success in offsetting ways, where students born after the entry cutoff date tend to achieve higher test scores yet complete fewer years of schooling. However, the laws have little impact on a number of other outcomes, including fertility, wages, and employment. This paper has two goals. First, using a North Carolina dataset which individually links birth certificate data to school administrative records, it more fully explores the opposite impacts on educational success than previous papers and investigates why students born after the cutoff date have lower educational attainment despite doing better in school. Second, it investigates the impact of school entry laws on teenage fertility and provides some evidence that test scores and years of education have negative impacts, but that these impacts offset each other in the case of school entry laws.     

The influence of labour force participation and education on fertility in Thailand

Abstract Increasingly, discussion of the appropriateness and effectiveness of methods to limit population growth have focussed both on measures which seek to provide new and efficient contraceptives to an ever larger target population and on those measures which go beyond family planning to emphasize the need for adoption of policies 'expressly related to family roles and opportunities for legitimate alternative satisfactions and activities'.(1) Proponents of the latter course of action argur that such policies offer greater promise of reduction in family size because they directly assault the motivational framework of reproduction. Among the means suggested for limiting reproductioe within marriage as well as postponing marriage is modification of the complementarity of the rolen of men and women.(2) Of particular interest in this regard is the nature of the relation betweens female labour force participation and education and fertility, and the implications these relations may have for future fertility reduction, particularly in the developing world.     

The effect of female education on fertility: A simple explanation

This paper investigates the structure of the relationship between female education and fertility. It is based on data published in First Country Reports of the World Fertility Surveys for eleven countries—Costa Rica, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Panama, Fiji, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia. The cumulative marital fertility of educated women is shown to be similar in different settings. A lack of uniformity in the education and fertility relationship including the curvilinear nature of this relationship observed across countries is shown to be attributable to marked differences between countries in the average fertility of women with no education rather than to the presumed differences in the average fertility of the educated women. The structure of the relationship is shown to be similar across several developing countries. This analysis suggests that advancement in female education can be expected to influence fertility behavior even without simultaneous changes in other factors such as increasing opportunity for participation in the paid labor force in the modem sector.     

The effects of teenage fertility on young adult childbearing

Numerous studies of fertility behavior find that an early age at first birth increases the rate of subsequent childbearing. Typically, however, these studies do not account for the possibility of serial correlation in the unobserved determinants of fertility. Using 1979–1992 individual-level data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this paper employs the Method of Simulated Moments to estimate panel probit models of annual birth outcomes. The panel probit models account for several alternative sources of serial correlation. Estimation reveals that once serial correlation is taken into account, the subsequent fertility effects of early childbearing are either statistically eliminated or reversed. JEL classification: J13 Received March 3, 1995 / Accepted February 23, 1996     

Mother's education and effect of son preference on fertility in Matlab,Bangladesh

This analysis follows earlier research that hypothesized and substantiated that, in a society with strong son preference, its effect on fertility would be conditional on the level of contraceptive use. Present analysis of the prospective fertility experience of 22,819 women of reproductive age during 3.5 years in Matlab, Bangladesh, shows that this effect is higher among mothers with postprimary schooling versus those with primary or no education. The higher effect conforms with the known positive relationship of contraceptive use with maternal schooling. However, this increase when contrasted with the idea that education promotes modern values, including gender equality, suggests that education in Matlab, with its traditional slant, is not resistant to son preference. In a poor, traditional society with low status for women, schooling alone is not enough to motivate women to abandon low esteem for daughters though schooling promotes child survival. But if preference for smaller family size increases, promoted by education including such modern values as gender equality, then sex preference, although it cannot be completely removed, will have minimal effect on fertility as in most developed countries.Abbreviations DSS demographic surveillance system - ICDDR,B International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh - MCH-FP maternal/child health and family planning - SPEF sex preference effect on fertility     

The influence of income on family fertility in the light of the results of empirical studies

Based on data from the 1973-83 Polish Family Budget Survey, this study examines the influence of income as a source of maintenance and income as a determinant of childbearing on family parity. It is assumed that income influences parity as a source of maintenance and as an influence on lifestyle or reproductive behavior. As a source of maintenance, the influence will be positive. As a life-style factor, it could be positive or negative. The hypotheses are 1) that positive influences are characteristics of older couples with a lower educational level and living in villages and small towns and income is a source of maintenance, and 2) a negative influence on parity reflects younger couples with higher educational levels from larger cities and income is a life-style factor. Some examples of how the theory of income influences total fertility are given in addition to a further elaboration of the theory. Other concepts introduced, as related to childbearing, are the value of goods and services with unchanged preferences and an increase in income, with preferences changing with income increases, with income preferences for nonprocreational and for procreational needs, and income as a factor influencing procreational needs and behavior. Correlation analysis is conducted for 33 subpopulations based on duration of marriage, educational level of the household, and size of residence. The results indicate that, in years 1973, 1975, and 1978 when income and parity are significant, the sign is positive. In 1980, there was a decrease in the number of subpopulations with a significant relationship, and in 3 subpopulations the results were negative. The 13 positive subpopulations were similar to those in the 1970s. In 1983, income explained an even smaller amount of parity. The subpopulations with a postive relationship usually have longer marriage durations, which suggest income as a source of maintenance. Negative results were among subpopulations with shorter marriage durations, which suggests life-style factor effects of income.     

Effects of public education and social security on fertility

Introducing a fertility decision and child care cost into an overlapping generations model with public education and social security, we examine the effects of these public policies on fertility. We show that an increase in income tax, which finances social security benefits and public investment in education, increases fertility. On the other hand, with a constant tax rate, a change in the allocation from social security benefits to public investment in education decreases fertility and, with a constant social security tax, the effect of education tax on fertility is neutral.