Changes in the use of birth control methods

Abstract Information on changes in the methods of contraception used was collected from women in a KAP Survey of Trinidad and Tobago in 1970-71. Using methods analagous to those used in the study of internal migration, it is found that 54% of contraceptors were still using the method they first used, and 46% had changed. In general, the net changes tended to be from less to more efficient methods. This is demonstrated with data showing: 1. the number of changes from one method to another; 2. the number of changes these women have made, considering the first and last methods only; and 3. the number of changes, including intermediate changes. Nevertheless, there is also an appreciable movement away from the more effective methods either to other methods, or out of contraceptive practice entirely. The rate of dropout from contraception has been increasing in recent years for all methods, and, apparently, for all ages of women. The principal reasons given for stopping the use of the various methods were: 1. pregnancy; 2. that the method was uncomfortable or too much trouble; 3. that the method made the user ill (in the case of the pill and the IUD); and 4. that the partner disliked the method (in the case of the condom and withdrawal). More positive reasons include: 1. that the woman wanted more children; and 2. that she no longer had a partner.     

Mobile Money and School Participation: Evidence from Africa

This paper shows that mobile money technology—an electronic wallet service that allows users to deposit, transfer, and receive money using their mobile phones—is positively correlated with increased school participation of children in school age. By using data from 4 African countries, we argue that, by reducing transaction costs, and by making it easier and less expensive to receive remittances, mobile money reduces the need for coping strategies that are detrimental to child development, such as withdrawing children from school and sending them to work. We find that mobile money increases the chances of children attending school. This finding is robust to different empirical models. In a nutshell, our results show that 1 million children could start attending school in low-income countries if mobile money was available to all.

     

Patterns of Mobile Phone Use in Developing Countries: Evidence from Africa

According to traditional welfare economics welfare occurs at the point where a good is purchased and some amount of utility is assumed to derive therefrom. According to Sen and others however one needs to look in addition to what use is made of the good after purchase. This paper throws new light on this process by means of a large new data-set that examines use patterns of mobile phones in 11 African countries. The main hypothesis is that this technology will be most widely used in countries lacking in viable alternatives to the use of mobile phones e.g. where public transport is weak or roads are poor. The results tend to support this view though there remains much to be explained.     

Education and gender bias in the sex ratio at birth: Evidence from India

This article investigates the possible existence of a nonlinear link between female disadvantage in natality and education. To this end, we devise a theoretical model based on the key role of social interaction in explaining people’s acquisition of preferences, which justifies the existence of a nonmonotonic relationship between female disadvantage in natality and education. The empirical validity of the proposed model is examined for the case of India, using district-level data. In this context, our econometric analysis pays particular attention to the role of spatial dependence to avoid any potential problems of misspecification. The results confirm that the relationship between the sex ratio at birth and education in India follows an inverted U-shape. This finding is robust to the inclusion of additional explanatory variables in the analysis, and to the choice of the spatial weight matrix used to quantify the spatial interdependence between the sample districts.     

Adult mortality in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from demographic and health surveys

This article reports levels, trends, and age patterns of adult mortality in 23 sub-Saharan Africa countries, based on the sibling histories and orphanhood data collected by the countries' Demographic and Health Surveys. Adult mortality has risen sharply since HIV became prevalent, but the size and speed of the mortality increase varies greatly among countries. Excess mortality is concentrated among women aged 25-39 and among men aged 30-44. These data suggest that the increase in the number of men who die each year has exceeded somewhat the increase for women. It is time for a systematic attempt to reconcile the demographic and epidemiological evidence concerning AIDS in Africa.     

Youth Migration Decisions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Satellite-Based Empirical Evidence from Nigeria

This article examines the implications of urban growth on youth migration decisions in Nigeria. We use night light intensity data combined with Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture data, as an indicator of urban growth and associated economic opportunities. Employing alternative econometric approaches that exploit the spatial and temporal differences in urban growth as proxied by night light intensity, we find that urban growth in potential migrant destinations encourages youth migration. We also find heterogeneous responses to urban growth among various groups of youth as well as varying responses to different types of migration. Broadly, women and those youth with more education are more likely to migrate, while those in households with livestock are less likely to migrate. Often, however, the effects are complex and varied. For example, land and physical asset ownership encourage temporary migration; but greater land ownership discourages permanent migration, while physical assets have insignificant effects. Our results from Nigeria show that policy makers concerned about rural–urban youth exodus should adopt a differentiated, in terms of targets, and multidimensional policy approach to reap the benefits of urbanization while avoiding its negative consequences.     

Child development and family resources: Evidence from the second generation of the 1958 British birth cohort

Studies of American and recently British children suggest that there is a link between family income and child development, in particular that one consequence of child poverty is to hold back cognitive development. This paper investigates the impact of family income, material deprivation, maternal education and child-rearing behaviour on an indicator of cognitive functioning, using British data on children aged 6 to 17 whose mothers are members of the 1958 Birth Cohort Study. The poorer average cognitive functioning among children from the lowest income groups could largely be accounted for, statistically, by the greater material disadvantage of these groups. These analyses provide evidence to suggest that low income has detrimental effects on children's cognitive functioning through the operation of longer-term material disadvantage, and that these effects may be mitigated by positive parental behaviours. Received: 31 July 1999/Accepted: 26 September 2000     

Some aspects of the use of birth expectations data from sample surveys for population projections

The value of national sample survey data relating to birth expectations for projecting births is reassessed in the light of data limitations pointed out by Ryder and Westoff among others and of the methods of projection used by the United States Bureau of the Census. The annual level of fertility under the cohort-fertility projection method depends on the assumptions regarding completed fertility, about which the available survey data are fairly informative, and on the assumptions regarding the timing of births, about which the survey data tell us very little. Test calculations suggest that Ryder and Westoff have overstated the significance of timing relative to completed family size for the level of future births. We believe that the fall in the annual total fertility rate in the first half of the sixties is to be explained only in part by a general delay in childbearing; a moderate to substantial decrease in completed family size has also occurred. Analysis of the latest set of fertility projections of the Census Bureau also suggests that the assumptions about completed fertility are a much more important determinant of the level of future births than timing, both in the short and long term. Although the available expectations data cannot help in predicting short-term annual changes in fertility, they appear useful for making long-term projections of annual fertility. Expansion of the size, frequency, and content of the sample surveys and incorporation of parity and birth interval into the projection method may improve projections.     

The Impact of the AIDS Pandemic on Health Services in Africa: Evidence from Demographic and Health Surveys

We document the impact of the AIDS crisis on non-AIDS-related health services in 14 sub-Saharan African countries. Using multiple waves of Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for each country, we examine antenatal care, birth deliveries, and rates of immunization for children born between 1988 and 2005. We find deterioration in nearly all these dimensions of health care over this period. The most recent DHS survey for each country collected data on HIV prevalence, which allows us to examine the association between HIV burden and health care. We find that erosion of health services is the largest in regions that have developed the highest rates of HIV. Regions of countries that have light AIDS burdens have witnessed small or no declines in health care, using the measures noted above, while those regions shouldering the heaviest burdens have seen the largest erosion in non-HIV-related health services for pregnant women and children. Using semiparametric techniques, we can date the beginning of the divergence in the use of antenatal care and in children’s immunizations between high- and low-HIV regions to the mid-1990s.     

Women's power and fertility transition: The cases of Africa and the West Indies

Over the last three decades, fertility has fallen dramatically throughout the West Indies (close to or below replacement-level on some islands). With few exceptions, fertility has risen or has remained at high levels in Africa. The difference is that Caribbean women have been empowered to pursue goals independently of their childbearing capacity, and African women have not. African fertility can be expected to decline, as it appears it may have begun in a small number of countries, where, when, and to the extent that African women come to enjoy economic mobility opportunities like those which have been available to their Caribbean peers.This paper reports findings from research supported by NSF Grants #BNS 8507605, 8520445, and 8804719 and one REU supplemental grant. I am most grateful for this support. But the views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of NSF. Caroline Bledsoe, Candice Bradley, and Etienne van de Walle deserve thanks for guiding me to the best of the recent literature on African demography, but no blame for what I did not find.     

Economic determinants of family size in West Africa

The economic theory of fertility postulates that income and prices, broadly defined, are important determinants of family size. What follows is an attempt to test this theory against the behavior of 717 predominantly urban households in Sierra Leone. Husband's education is used as a proxy for income; the "price" of a child is accounted for by wife's education and wife's wage rate. Other important variables are wife's age, a measure of child "quality," wife's age at first birth, and child mortality. The findings of the study tend to lend support to the economic theory of fertility but contain certain peculiarities which indicate a need for further research.     

Urbanization as a Global Historical Process: Theory and Evidence from sub‐Saharan Africa

Urbanization has traditionally been understood as a byproduct of economic development, but this explanatory framework fails to account for the phenomenon of “urbanization without growth” observed in sub‐Saharan Africa throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In light of this apparent anomaly, I argue that urbanization is better understood as a global historical process driven by population dynamics associated with technological and institutional innovations that have substantially improved disease control and food security in urban settlements across the globe. These innovations first emerged in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were subsequently diffused through colonialism, trade, and international development assistance. A range of qualitative and quantitative evidence is presented to demonstrate that this historically grounded theory of urbanization offers a more convincing explanation for the stylized facts of Africa's urban transition—and hence the process of world urbanization more broadly—than the traditional economic account.     

Tacit consent: the Church and birth control in northern Italy

This article employs novel documentation to examine ways in which the Church's moral rules on contraception were (or were not) communicated to parishioners in a predominantly Catholic context in a period of rapid fertility decline: the diocese of Padua, in the northeastern Italian region of Veneto, during the first half of the twentieth century. The account is based on documents that have until now been overlooked: the moral cases discussed during the periodic meetings among Padua priests in the years 1916–58, and the written answers provided by priests in response to a question asked of them concerning their efforts to combat the limiting of births. This documentation reveals the limited effect on the reproductive behavior of the position of the Catholic Church against birth control.     

The Determinants of the Duration of Postpartum Sexual Abstinence in West Africa: A Multilevel Analysis

The question of how postpartum sexual abstinence responds to social change in West Africa is important because declines in the practice could increase fertility levels and worsen child and maternal health. This study uses data from the late 1970s in Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Cameroon to examine effects of modernization and women’s status on the length of abstinence. The results show that modernization and female status should be associated with declines in abstinence, which could lead to an increase in fertility and deterioration in maternal and child health.     

Modelling period fertility: Schooling and intervals following a birth in Eastern Africa

We describe a regression-based approach to the modelling of age-, order-, and duration-specific period fertility, using retrospective survey data. The approach produces results that are free of selection biases and can be used to study differential fertility. It is applied to Demographic and Health Survey data for Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe to investigate differential trends in fertility by education. Parity progression fell and the intervals following each birth lengthened between the 1970s and 2000s in all four countries. Fertility fell most among women with secondary education. In contrast to other world regions, postponement of successive births for extended periods accounted for much of the initial drop in fertility in these African countries. However, family size limitation by women with secondary education in Ethiopia and Kenya and longer birth spacing in Zimbabwe also played significant roles. Thus, birth control is being adopted in Eastern Africa in response to diverse changes in fertility preferences.     

The users of birth control clinics

At the request of the Family Planning Association a Working Party is inquiring into the Association’s work and organisation. In 1960 the Working Party conducted a national survey of the work, organisation and financing of the network of voluntary birth control clinics which the Association had established chiefly since 1948. The main findings of this survey are contained in the Working Party’s interim report, Family Planning and Family Planning Clinics To-day, issued in a restricted edition by the Association in May, 1962. This paper presents the gist of one chapter, assessing the contribution made by clinics to the birth control behaviour of the British people. The clinic survey followed less than twelve months after the Population Investigation Committee’s Marriage Survey so that it was possible to fit data about clinic users into the Marriage Survey’s wider context. To this end tabulations specially prepared by the Marriage Survey are incorporated in this paper.

Clinic users in 1960 were virtually all women. They differed from the majority of birth control users in that they preferred, or at least were advised to try, a minority method—the female cap—which is only slowly gaining in popularity. Clinics recommended this method to virtually all clients, whether newly-wed or mothers of large families. They were consulted by about one in every nine women marrying during the year and by between 1 and 1 1/2 per cent of wives at each later stage of family building. Among clinic users non-manual occupations are more strongly represented, and unskilled and semi-skilled occupations less strongly represented, than in the total population. Many who go to clinics are not beginners, but want to try a different method. But one-third of new clients are women who have not yet borne a child, nearly all young and just starting married life. The growing population of newly-weds among clients is altering the nature of clinic work. Regionally there is evidence of increasing conservatism in clinic work and clinic clientele as one moves from London to Scotland.     

More choices of birth control approaches

In rural Zhejiang Province, China, family planning intermediaries are appointed for each village to introduce comprehensive measures of birth control to the people. With an education level of junior middle school at least, they are mostly working women of high prestige in their villages. After appointment as intermediaries, these women are trained for 1-2 weeks in health stations or maternal and child health care stations in towns. Back in the villages, they take over responsibility for distributing monthly contraceptives as needed by women of childbearing age. The intermediaries also explain the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of contraceptives to newly wedded women and give them guidance and recommendations. Intermediaries also can provide simple treatment for complaints caused by contraceptive use. For example, if women complain of nausea while 1st taking oral contraceptives (OCs), the intermediaries will give them vitamin B6. When intermediairies encounter difficulties, such as women who cannot use OCs for a long time because of a liver ailment, they refer the people to health stations or send for a doctor. The number of induced abortions has declined because of the fact that a vast number of women of childbearing age in rural areas now obtain appropriate contraceptives in time. Generally, each intermediary is assigned to be in charge of 15-20 households, making a regular monthly visit to each of these families. The contraceptives they distribute are from town governments, which give them a certain amount of annual subsidies.     

Motives for interqenerational transfers: Evidence from Malaysia

In this paper we discuss a number of hypotheses about motives for intergenerational transfers within the family. We use data on time and money transfers between generations in Malaysia, where there is neither Social Security nor Medicare, to explore these hypotheses empirically. We find evidence supporting the hypotheses that children are an important source of old age security and that old age security is, in part, children s repayment for parental investments in their education. This repayment is partly a function of the children’s in come and, in the case of females, a function of their spouse’s in come. We also find evidence supporting the hypotheses that parents and children engage in the exchange of time help for money.     

坚持计划生育不动摇

一段时期以来,关于我国计划生育问题的争论甚嚣尘上,一些人认为计划生育减少了我国未来社会的劳动力数量,增加了未来社会的养老负担,削弱了中华民族未来的国际竞争力和可持续发展能力。提出废止计划生育、甚至鼓励生育的主张。事实是否真的如这些人所言,我们确实应该停止计划生育呢？对此。本文通过对我国经济社会发展所必须的主要资源人均占有量的国际比较．通过继续实行计划生育20-30年后的我国全社会供养负担率的严格测算,指出：由于人均资源的严重不足,要实现我国经济社会的可持续发展,我们必须继续实行严格的计划生育政策。严格而又充分地执行现行计划生育政策,虽然在一定时期内全社会的养老负担会逐步加大。但由于新出生人口的比重下降,全社会的供养负担率并不会上升。因此．我们不仅有必要、而且也有可能坚持计划生育不动摇。