Residence background,socioeconomic status,and fertility

Previous research has demonstrated that socioeconomic differentials in fertility are heavily influenced by couples with rural background. These studies show an inverse relationship between fertility and socioeconomic status for couples of rural background, but no relationship for urbanorigin couples. The effect of urban background on rural fertility differentials has not been examined. This study investigates the potential effect of urban-origin couples on socioeconomic differences in fertility in rural areas. Data from the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity are analyzed to show that rural socioeconomic fertility differences are not influenced by the presence of persons of urban background.     

The fertility of negroes without southern rural experience: A re-examination of the 1960 GAF study findings with 1967 SEO Data

Abstract A major finding of the 1960 'Growth of American Families' (GAF) study was that whites and blacks without southern rural experience had similar fertility. This paper reports on a re-examination of this finding with a substantially larger black sample. Data from the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity demonstrated that the residence background classification utilized in the GAF study defeated, in part, the attempt to remove the effects of rural experience on fertility. Indigenous urban blacks had 25% higher fertility than indigenous urban whites. The fertility of urban black migrants out of the rural South was sharply curtailed in contrast to those remaining in the rural South. Although urban blacks of southern rural background had nominally higher fertility than indigenous urban blacks, the difference was neither statistically nor substantively significant. These results demand a re-ordering of the interpretation of the impact that migration has on urban black fertility and the white-black differential in fertility.     

Effects of population policy and economic reform on the trend in fertility in Guangdong province,China, 1975–2005

An analysis of data mainly from China's 1990 and 2000 censuses and 2005 mini-census shows how fertility decline between 1975 and 2005 in the province of Guangdong has been influenced by both fertility policy and economic and social development. Guangdong's development since 1975 has been very rapid and has attracted huge numbers of migrants from other provinces. The analysis of the province's fertility trend from 1975 shows clearly the influence of fertility policy on the trend. The analysis also shows that economic development has brought about large changes in population composition by urban/rural residence, education, occupation, and migration status, which, together with large fertility differentials by these characteristics, have contributed substantially to Guangdong's fertility decline, in large part through changes in proportions currently married.     

Residence background and fertility in Greater Bombay

Abstract The residence background of wives who migrate to metropolitan areas plays an important role in determining their fertility. From the data collected during 1966, relating to 7,872 currently married women of Greater Bombay, an attempt was made to establish differentials in marital fertility by residence background of the wives. This was categorized into three groups - non-migrants, urban migrants and rural migrants. It was observed that rural migrant wives exhibited significantly higher fertility compared with the other two groups, and this was explained by their lower educational attainment. Between the non-migrant and the urban migrant wives the latter consistently showed lower fertility for all age groups up to 40, while there was a reversal in the age group 40 and above, where non-migrants exhibited lower fertility. The urban migrant wives showed a somewhat higher level of education, most likely on account of selectivity, compared to the non-migrants. However, presence of a sizeable number of Parsee wives, characterized by a distinct urban culture and considerably lower fertility, was largely responsible for the low fertility of the non-migrant wives in the age group 40 and above. The variable that has emerged as the most influential in creating fertility differentials is education of the wife, which is shown to be negatively associated with the level of fertility. Wife's education explains to a large extent the observed fertility differentials by residence background.     

Interrelations between migration and fertility in Thailand

Based on special tabulations of 1960 census data on migration within Thailand, this analysis attempts to assess the role of migration in the urbanization process and the relation between migration and fertility. The importance of migration to urban growth is evidenced by the clearcut positive relationship between the percentage of persons classified as either lifetime or 5-year migrants and the urban character of their 1960 place of residence. Yet, the evidence also points to an increasing proportion of urban growth in recent decades attributable to natural increase. The specific relation between fertility and migration varies depending on the measure of migration used: Compared to nonmigrants in their place of destination, the fertility levels of lifetime migrants are not very different; but those of 5-year migrants are considerably lower. Regardless of migration status, however, fertility level is markedly lower for those living in urban places compared to those in rural places. This suggests the important role of both migration and urbanization in affecting fertility levels in Thailand.     

Thailand’s urban population reconsidered

In lieu of any official definition of “urban population” in Thailand, researchers and policy makers have generally used a simple urban-rural dichotomy, relying upon the administratively designated municipal areas as urban and the remainder of the kingdom as rural. For administrative purposes, however, a more refined set of residence categories is available: the “urban” segment is subdivided into three categories of municipal areas; within the “rural” group, units of population concentration classified as sanitary districts are distinguished from the remainder of the rural population. Data from a 1970 census sample tape have been used to analyze a number of socioeconomic characteristics, as well as migration and fertility, for each of these five residence categories separately in an attempt to determine if the formerly used rural-urban dichotomy is valid. For each of the characteristics and for migration and fertility, a clear urban-rural continuum emerges, with the sanitary districts generally resembling the smaller urban places more than they do the rural areas under which they are usually subsumed. The evaluation thus suggests the importance to research and policy either of using an urban-rural continuum or of grouping sanitary districts with municipal areas when a dichotomy must be used. Doing so should facilitate evaluation of the interrelations between urbanization and demographic and development factors.     

Urbanization and the fertility transition in Ghana

This paper examines the way in which migration and urban residence operate to alter fertility outcomes. While urban-rural fertility differentials have long been established for most developing societies, the nature of these differences among migrants and between migrants and those of succeeding generations is not well understood. The evidence presented here suggests that rural-urban migration and urbanization may contribute positively to processes of fertility transition. Using data from the 1998 Kumasi Peri-Urban Survey, which included a 5-year retrospective monthly calendar of childbearing, we suggest that migrants adapt quickly to an urban environment. Our results also reveal generational differences in recent and cumulative fertility. While migrants exhibit higher cumulative fertility than urban residents of the second and third generation, their fertility is significantly lower than rural averages in Ghana. Children of migrants exhibit childbearing patterns quite similar to those in higher-order generations. Most noteworthy is the nature of the disparities in childbearing patterns between migrants and the succeeding generations. Migrant women have higher lifetime fertility than urban natives. Migrant women also exhibit higher fertility over the last 5 years than second generation or high-order urban natives. But these first generation women exhibit lower fertility (vs. urban natives) for the year immediately prior to the survey. These patterns lend support to an interpretation that combines rather than opposes theories of selectivity, disruption, adaptation and socialization. We conclude by discussing mechanisms that might explain these interrelated processes of fertility adjustment and suggest that policies discouraging rural-urban migration need to be revisited.     

Migration and fertility in Puerto Rico

Abstract In an investigation based on special tabulations of the 25 per cent sample from the 1960 Census of Population for Puerto Rico, it is found that migration experience tends to be associated with fertility for various marital statuses, including consensual unions, and for rural, urban and metropolitan residence. The findings cannot be attributed to variations in age composition among the various categories as age standardization and age-specificcomparisons yield similar results. However, it is also found that rural-urban and consensually-legally mated differentials in fertility cannot be accounted for by variations in the migration variables that are examined. Thus, consistently higher fertility is found for non-migrants than for migrants; for consensually mated than for legally married and for rural than for urban or metropolitan residents. With a single exception, women in consensual unions, fertility is lower for women in the San Juan metropolitan area than in the other urban areas.     

Fertility adaptation by rural-urban migrants in developing countries: The case of Korea

Summary The purpose of this study is to develop and test a model to assess the influence of rural-urban migration on fertility in less developed countries. Two major reasons may account for lower fertility levels observed among such migrants than among women who remained in rural areas: a selection effect, and adaptation to constraints in the area of destination. Results of previous studies have only rarely suggested that the effect of adaptation was significant. We use the detailed personal migration and pregnancy histories recorded in the Korean World Fertility Survey of 1974 and an autoregressive model to control for unobservable variations in personal preferences for different family sizes between migrants and non-migrants. Our study provides evidence that adaptation following rural-urban migration is a significant factor which explains the lower fertility of rural-urban migrants compared with that of rural stayers.     

Residential preferences,community satisfaction,and the intention to move

This paper explores the role of size of place residential preference in the evolution of the intention to move out of the present community using data from the March 1974 NORC Amalgam Survey. People who prefer to live in a community having different size or location characteristics than their present residence are five times more likely to intend to move than those who have attained their preferred type of residence. Within these two groups, however, the particular configuration of current and preferred residence has no significant effect on the likelihood of intending to move. This finding justifies the creation of a simple dichotomous variable, preference status, contrasting these two groups. Community satisfaction and preference status are highly interrelated and each has an independent effect on intentions to move. Moreover, the effect of preference status on mobility intentions is somewhat larger than that for community satisfaction, indicating that residential preference plays a significant role in the decision-making process regarding migration.     

中国的家庭结构转变--来自居住方式与人口因素的作用

基于历次人口普查数据,利用SOCSIM微观模拟方法将家庭转变的关键影响因素分解为人口因素和居住方式因素两个方面,并进一步将人口因素分解为人口惯性、生育率、死亡率和结婚率四个层面进行计量分析.结果发现,当前人口变动相对稳定,较小的波动使其在家庭转变中的贡献率相对较小,而居住方式的影响相对较大;对人口因素的进一步分解还发现,人口惯性及生育率水平的作用相对更大,生育率水平、结婚率水平带来的影响与人口因素的总影响方向是一致的,均提高了一人户、一代户、二代户的人口比重,降低了三代及以上户的人口比重.与之相反,死亡率的影响与人口因素的总影响方向是相反的.     

Urbanization and fertility: An event-history analysis of Coastal Ghana

In this article, we undertake an event-history analysis of fertility in Ghana. We exploit detailed life history calendar data to conduct a more refined and definitive analysis of the relationship among personal traits, urban residence, and fertility. Although urbanization is generally associated with lower fertility in developing countries, inferences in most studies have been hampered by a lack of information about the timing of residence in relationship to childbearing. We find that the effect of urbanization itself is strong, evident, and complex, and persists after we control for the effects of age, cohort, union status, and education. Our discrete-time event-history analysis shows that urban women exhibit fertility rates that are, on average, 11% lower than those of rural women, but the effects vary by parity. Differences in urban population traits would augment the effects of urban adaptation itself. Extensions of the analysis point to the operation of a selection effect in rural-to-urban mobility but provide limited evidence for disruption effects. The possibility of further selection of urbanward migrants on unmeasured traits remains. The analysis also demonstrates the utility of an annual life history calendar for collecting such data in the field.     

中国人口迁移与生育率关系研究

本文利用2000年人口普查数据,考察了中国人口迁移与生育率的关系。通过比较农村本地人口、城市本地人口和流动迁移人口三个人口群体在生育率上的差异,并进行多元统计分析,结果表明,流动迁移对生育率有着非常显著影响,城市外来人口的生育率不仅显著低于农村本地人口,而且也低于城市本地人口;远期流迁人口的生育率要低于近期流迁人口的生育率。中国人口迁移与生育率的关系出现了与已有的迁移生育率理论的不一致。1990年代中国的迁移生育率发生了转变。     

Strength of fertility motivation and contraceptive use in Nepal

The study's purpose was to test whether new survey questions on strength of fertility motivation, included in Nepal's 1986 Fertility and Family Planning Survey, enable improved prediction of current contraceptive use. Intent to use contraception in the future was also tested, over and above the effects of socioeconomic background. While controlling selected demographic and socioeconomic background characteristics of the respondents, the authors found the effect of the strength of fertility motivation on current contraceptive use to be substantial and highly significant statistically. Nevertheless, the background factors largely captured the effect of motivational strength on current use when motivational strength was deleted from the model, inasmuch as measures of global fit declined only slightly as a consequence of the deletion. These findings indicate that respondents' demographic and socioeconomic background characteristics affect motivational strength, so that motivational strength does not have a large independent effect on use. These results raise the question of whether strength of fertility motivation can be affected by educational efforts mounted by family planning programs to increase contraceptive use. The analysis shows that strength of motivation does have some independent effect on contraceptive use, and it is quite possible that this independent effect could be enhanced by educational programs operating independently of the socioeconomic characteristics of program recipients. Because the 1986 survey lacks relevant data, we have not been able to explore this possibility empirically.     

The Impact of Migration on Fertility under China’s Underlying Restrictions: A Comparative Study Between Permanent and Temporary Migrants

Compared with that in other countries, the issue of fertility in China is more complicated because of its restriction policy or system. Several major hypotheses have been proposed to explain and predict the impact of migration on China’s fertility regardless of China’s real situation. Therefore, this paper analyzes the impact of migration on fertility considering China’s underlying restrictions using the data from the Chinese General Social Survey carried out in 2008. The social class in this study was divided into two, namely urban class and rural class. By building the 2 × 2 mobility tables and the diagonal mobility model, the study determined the impact of migration on fertility and analyzed the influence of some restrictions, such as family planning, traditional fertility concept, and household registration system. Results show that migration greatly affects fertility: upward migration (i.e., from rural to urban) may decrease the fertility, whereas downward migration (i.e., from urban to rural) may increase it. The degree of decline on fertility is greater than that of increase. Family planning still plays a role in fertility decline. Traditional concepts on fertility, for example, bringing up sons to take care of parents in their old age and preferring boys to girls, are anchored on the people’s mind, which is detrimental to the stability of the fertility rate. Moreover, the household registration system primarily influences the fertility behavior of temporary migration, with a negative relationship between them.     

Armed Conflict and the Timing of Childbearing in Azerbaijan

Research on fertility changes in former Soviet states of the South Caucasus is scant and has overlooked the role of armed conflicts. This study contributes to filling these gaps by providing the first detailed account of fertility changes in Azerbaijan since independence and by exploring them in relation to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Armenia. Estimates from retrospective birth history data from the 2006 Demographic and Health Survey show that since 1991 period fertility declined to almost below-replacement levels, essentially as a result of stopping behavior, and, only recently, slight birth postponement. While the conflict seems to have little influence on aggregate trends, discrete-time logit models accounting for unobserved heterogeneity reveal a 42–45 percent higher risk of transitioning to the second birth for women who have been exposed to conflict violence—whether in the form of forced migration or because of residence in the conflict-torn Karabakh region—than for nonexposed women. Never-migrant women from Karabakh have also significantly higher probability of having a first child. Further positive effects on fertility are observed for women who lost a child during peak conflict years. Risk-insurance and replacement effects are possible mechanisms explaining such fertility responses.     

Rural-Urban Migration and Reproductive Behavior in Guatemala

Guatemala has the highest fertility of any country in Latin America, and it is also the least urbanized. Projected rural-urban migration will shift more of Guatemala's population from rural areas into towns and cities. This article uses retrospective life-history data collected in migrant origin and destination areas in Guatemala to compare the fertility of rural-urban migrant women to that of rural and urban nonmigrants. Results from discrete-time hazard regression models of union formation, first birth, and third and higher parity births indicate that delayed marriage while still in rural areas, and the rapid adoption of urban fertility practices after migration, result in intermediate migrant fertility that is closer to that of urban natives than rural nonmigrants. If current patterns are any guide to the future, the redistribution of population from high fertility rural areas to towns and cities in Guatemala will accelerate the decline in aggregate fertility beyond what would have resulted from declines in rural and urban fertility alone.     

Fertility among ethnic groups in the USSR

Thirty-six ethnie groups in the USSR are analyzed as to fertility differentials. The analysis is based on data from the 1959 nationwide census. To explain the fertility differentials found, ethnographic and sociological features of these groups are traced as a possible contributing factor. One of the poignant observations of the study is the fact that almost all ethnic groups with fertility above the median are those belonging to Moslem and Buddhist traditions. They are primarily located in the Central Asian republics, the Caucasus, and some parts of southern Siberia. Low fertility levels are by and large associated with the Eastern Orthodox Slavs and the Protestant Balts.Ratios of the number of children aged 0-9 to the number of women in the 20-49 age group are related to independent variables in the following order of importance: traditional religion, percentage of married women in the 20-49 age group, degree of literacy, male-female literacy differential, and sex ratio. The multiple correlation of 0.911 was obtained between the child-woman ratio and the first four of the most important independent variables. Sex ratio appeared significant only after the influence of the percentage of married women was eliminated from the analysis of multiple and partial correlations.The data suggest that the urban-rural differential is a non-linear function of the urban-rural migration. A more complete explanation of the divergence between urban and rural child-woman fertility ratios should be made the subject of separate studies.     

Variations in interstate migration of men across the early stages of the life cycle

The results reported here show that the stage of an individual's life cycle not only has direct effects on the likelihood of migration, but also establishes a context within which the motives to migrate are evaluated and acted upon. One contextual impact of the life cycle concerns the effects of length of residence on migration. The results show that the probability of migrating declines more rapidly over time for married males with children than for singles males--i.e., the difference between the likelihood of migration for single males and married males with children widens with increasing length of residence. Much of this difference may be due to the greater number and strength of community ties for individuals who are married with children. These ties are not well developed at the beginning of a residence but continue to strengthen over the course of a residence. In addition, there are variations in the levels of job rewards and location-specific resources across the life cycle and there are two variations across the early life cycle in the effects of independent variables on the initial rate of migration. One resource (self-employment) and one job reward (prestige) have different effects for single individuals than for either group of married males. If the span of the life cycle considered in this analysis were broadened to include older men, additional differences in the effects of independent variables might be uncovered. In research with cross-sectional data containing a wider range of ages than the data used here, Heaton et al. (1981) found that economic variables were more important in determining the migration of younger individuals than that of older individuals, whereas noneconomic factors were more important determinants of the migration of older than of younger individuals. The results of this paper and Heaton's results suggest that at different stages of life people use a somewhat different "subjective cost-benefit calculus" in making migration decisions. The importance of certain migration determinants may vary significantly depending on whether an individual is married, whether he or she has children, and/or whether he or she is in the labor force or retired. Additional research on these issues could greatly contribute to our understanding of migration.     

Demographic aspects of fertility in Thailand

Abstract Data from a national rural and urban sample survey are analysed in order to examine various demographic aspects of fertility in Thailand. Marital fertility rates found for Thailand are among the highest in Asia. Particularly noteworthy is the persistence of high fertility at older ages of childbearing for rural women. Cumulative fertility shows a pronounced relationship with age at marriage and current marital status. Women who marry at an older age or who experience disruption of their marriages are clearly more likely to have fewer children ever born. Differences in both current and cumulative fertility are strongly associated with residence. Rural women who constitute the vast majority of Thai women, experience the highest fertility, Bangkok-Thonburi women experience the lowest fertility and provincial urban women are characterized by an intermediate fertility level which is closer, however, to the experience of their counterparts in the capital than in the countryside. Rural-urban fertility differences are mitigated but by no means eliminated by differences in infant mortality. In both rural and urban areas a positive association between cumulative fertility and infant morality is evident. Breast-feeding, commonly practised for extended periods-among both rural and urban Thai women, undoubtedly serves to some extent as an intervening variable in this relationship. A comparison of current fertility with cumulative fertility strongly suggests that a decline in marital fertility has been under way recently among urban women, especially those residing in the capital, but not at all among rural women. Although it seems safe to assume that the urban fertility decline results in large part from an increasing use of contraception among urban women, those still in the reproductive ages who were using or had previously used birth control were characterized by higher cumulative fertility than women who had never practised contraception. Evidently couples resort to family planning only late in the family building process after they have already achieved or exceeded the number of children they wish to have.