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.     

亚洲女性收入对生育率影响的国际比较研究--基于劳动参与率、受教育程度、就业方式的视角

通过构建家庭效用函数模型,论证了家庭收入增长中女性收入对家庭生育决策的影响,说明了随着女性收入的提高,会降低生育率。进一步,通过引用女性劳动参与率、受教育程度及就业方式作为女性收入对生育率影响的中间变量,再运用相关数据进行实证分析,发现女性劳动参与率、受教育程度对生育率有着负向的影响,而女性非全日制就业方式对生育率有着正向的影响。再进一步,对亚洲各国生育政策的调整进行国际比较,探讨生育政策的具体措施与影响女性收入的三个因素之间的关系,最后针对中国目前的生育水平提出两方面的建议：硬政策的完善和软环境的支持,以有助于提高人口素质,优化人口结构。     

Women’s fertility, religion and education in a low-fertility population: Evidence from South Australia

The old issue of religion and fertility is examined in relation to women s level of education. In-depth interviews exploring influences on parity for Adelaide parents in 2003–04 suggest that more frequent attendance at religious services in childhood, and affiliation with particular religious denominations, are related to both higher preferred and higher achieved parity, even for women with university education. For some university-educated women, their religious upbringing appears to play a part in negating the traditional relationship between higher education and lower fertility. Quantitative data on religion, fertility and educational level from the 1996 Census for women aged 40–44 in South Australia show that women with No Religion had lower fertility than those With a religion, while university-educated women in New Protestan-New Christian groups had higher fertility than university-educated women in other denominations. The findings provide an understanding of some social conditions that support higher fertility in a low-fertility population. Future fertility research in developed countries should include consideration of the influence of religious affiliation and religiosity at disaggregated levels of inquiry.     

Female fertility history and mid-late-life health: Findings from China

China’s middle-aged and older women suffer from poorer health than men. Using national baseline data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), a survey conducted from 2011 to 2012, this article applies logistic models to investigate the association between female fertility history (parity, early childbearing, late childbearing) and middle-aged and late-life health. We find that parity is related to the mid-late-life health of women. Women with four children or more are more likely to suffer from activities of daily living (ADL) impairment and poorer self-rated health than those with one to three children. Early childbearing is associated with ADL impairment; however, the correlation is mediated by socioeconomic status. Early childbearing is related to self-rated health in later life by an indirect-only mediation effect via educational attainment and personal income.     

The Role of Spousal Income in the Wife’s Happiness

Few studies have examined spousal income in the context of happiness. This paper analyzes the Indonesia family life survey and finds a positive relationship between the husband’s income and his wife’s happiness. Specifically, a 100 % increase in the husband’s income is related to a 0.72 % point increase in his wife expressing very happy, which is about 11 % of the proportion expressing that response. Surprisingly, among the husband’s characteristics, only his income (along with health) is statistically significantly related to his wife’s happiness. This positive relationship is particularly strong among old, educated, and poor (in absolute and relative terms) urban residents.     

Differential fertility in central India: A path analysis

This study is one of the few multivariate analyses of the relations of several demographic and socioeconomic variables to fertility and the use of contraception. For fertility, 56 of the 92 hypothesized paths are found to be significant at the .05 level or better. The five variables having a significant and direct effect on fertility, as shown by their path coefficients (p), are: duration of marriage (p= .721), spouse’s cohort (p= ?.093), spouse’s age at marriage (p = .052), caste (p = ?.071), and number of siblings of husband (p = .050). p] The use of contraception is affected by, in order of importance, the spouse’s education (p = .267), the husband’s education (p = .099), the husband’s income (p= .089), and surplus children, i.e., number of living children exceeding ideal number of children (p = .059). Child mortality, which is linked to number of living children and thus indirectly to surplus children, is affected by, in order of importance, the number of children ever born (p = .723), the husband’s education (p = \t-.166), the spouse’s absence by death or separation (p = .084), and family structure (p = \t-.035). p] The advantages and disadvantages of path analysis for this type of research are briefly mentioned.     

Family allowances and fertility: Socioeconomic differences

This article explores socioeconomic differences in the effect of family allowances on fertility. Although several studies have examined the relationship between cash benefits and fertility, few studies have addressed the possible differential effects of cash benefits on families of different income or education levels. I reconstructed the birth histories of women in the past two Israeli censuses of 1983 and 1995 to study socioeconomic differences in the effect of family allowances up to the seventh parity. The results indicate that family allowances have a significant effect at every parity. Using female education as an indicator of socioeconomic status, I find that socioeconomic status is a significant modifier of the effect of family allowances. Family allowances seem to have a relatively large impact on more-educated women.     

子女孩次性别结构与女性再生育——基于孩次性别递进生育率的分析

现有子女的孩次性别结构是影响女性再生育的重要因素。使用中国2000年人口普查数据和时期孩次性别递进生育指标对女性生育水平进行了测算。结果显示,女性普遍生育但终身只生育一个孩子的比例很大,基于孩次性别结构的生育行为体现了男孩偏好;城市和镇在生育第一孩时就存在性别选择;第一个孩子是女孩的女性生育二孩的可能性较大,且二孩是男孩的比例显著大于是女孩的比例;第一个孩子是男孩的城市和镇的女性大部分不再生育,而农村女性有很大比例会生育二孩,但几乎不存在性别选择。采用某地区2019年的数据进行补充验证,同样发现:只有一个女孩的女性相比较只有一个男孩的女性生育者生第二孩的可能性要高很多,以上研究发现对当前二孩生育行为具有一定的启示意义。     

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.     

Puzzles and further explorations in the interrelationships of successive births with husband’s income,spouses’ education and race

When fertility is examined in the detail of individual parity progressions and birth-order transitions, important interactions between the effects of income and education are seen. Among the findings are: the negative effect of education on fertility is stronger at all parities for less educated compared to more highly educated women. Additional income has a more positive effect for more highly educated than for less educated women. For women with 0-8 years of education the effect of more income is positive when the family has no children but negative thereafter, but for college-educated women the effect of more income is positive. And additional income has a less positive (more negative) effect on fertility among nonwhites than among whites.     

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.     

Socio-economic correlates of fecundability in a sample of taiwanese women

Estimates of fecundability (monthly probability of conception) in the absence of contraception are derived from the frequency distribution of conceptive delays immediately following marriage, reported by 2,443 married women aged 20 to 39 included in the Taichung (Taiwan) Intensive Fertility Survey of 1962. Average fecundability of women is positively associated with their socio-economic status. These differentials are not accounted for by differences among socio-economic groups with respect to memory and truncation biases (associated with the marriage duration), wife’s age at marriage, or unreported premarital conceptions. A Multiple Classification Analysis suggests that among the socio-economic characteristics, husband’s education, rural background, and modern family type are the more important predictors of fecundability. The importance of genetic factors as opposed to cultural factors in producing these socio-economic differences in fecundability can not be evaluated systematically. Moreover, the relation of a couple’s privacy, their attitude toward family building, and patterns of mate selection to their socioeconomic status would have to be taken into account before the differences in fecundability could be attributed to factors such as nutrition, health, or infections which might directly influence their physiological ability to conceive.     

Findings and implications of a correlation analysis of the closed and the open birth intervals

A correlation analysis of data on four fertility variables viz. closed birth interval, open birth interval, age and parity, collected in a survey of about 2,000 married women in the reproductive ages in rural India, is carried out in order to study the interrelationships among these variables. Two hypotheses are formulated governing the relationship of the closed and open birth intervals with the fecundability distribution of fertile women, and Parity Progression Ratios which are largely influenced by the proportion of women becoming sterile after each parity. The data lend support to the hypothesis that while the closed intervals are influenced mainly by the distribution of fecundability of women of non-zero fecundability, the open birth intervals are influenced mainly by Parity Progression Ratios or the proportion of women becoming secondarily sterile after each parity. The analysis suggests that we can use the mean open intervals of women classified by parity as indices of fertility, and such an index is comparable to the index of average age of women of given parity. In areas where it is difficult to ascertain the correct age of women this might be of practical value.     

Determinants Of Cumulative Fertility In Ghana

The relatively few studies conducted on fertility differentials in Ghana have not controlled for the effect of important demographic variables, such as age at first marriage and current age of respondent. This paper attempts a multivariate analysis of the relationship between cumulative fertility and age at first marriage, level of education, religion, form of marriage and residence of husband. Data drawn from a census sample survey in 1971 include 72,816 currently married females aged 15–49 years. Age at first marriage was inversely related to cumulative fertility. The differentials were more pronounced for older women. Among the older women, the differentials were larger for rural than urban women. There were also significant fertility differentials associated with level of education, religion and form of marriage. Husband’s residence was a poor predictor of cumulative fertility. As a policy measure, it is suggested that priority be given to providing young women with more education or employment opportunities as an alternative to early marriage.     

Cohort Parity Analysis and Fertility Transition Dynamics: Reconstructing Historical Trends in Fertility Control from a Single Census

The Cohort Parity Analysis (CPA) method for the indirect measurement of the extent of marital fertility control makes use of parity distribution data of the kind reported, for specified marriage duration and marriage-age (or current age) groups of women, by a fertility census. Corresponding to every such distribution, CPA yields efficient upper and lower bounds on the proportion of controllers in the specified cohort, as well as bounds for the parity distribution of the controllers. As the women who belong to different marriage cohorts are observed at different durations of marriage in a census, it is possible to infer inter-cohort trends in the extent of fertility control (at some specified marriage duration(s)) if one knows the time pattern of the adoption of control among the members of each cohort. It is shown in this paper that robust estimates of the intracohort diffusion pattern can be obtained from the census cross-section itself, by supplementing the basic assumptions of the CPA framework with a plausible assumption about the behaviour of the ‘representative’ controller in a given cohort. The estimation technique is illustrated by applications to data for married women in urban Eire from the Census of Ireland in 1911, and to native white married women in the U.S. South from the U.S. Census of 1910.     

Ethnic variations in the relationship between income and fertility

The effects of husband'spotential andrelative incomes on completed fertility, as well as their effects on certain parity progression probabilities, are examined within samples of Anglos, Blacks and Mexican Americans. Relationships are estimated using data from the one-percent 1960 and 1970 U.S. Public Use Samples. The results reveal different patterns of relationship by ethnicity between the measures of income and the measures of fertility. The effects on completed fertility of the income measures are positive for Anglos and negative for Blacks, while in the case of Mexican Americans the effect ofpotential income is negative and that ofrelative income is positive. Income effects on the parity progression probabilities are similar in pattern to those from the analyses using completed fertility, although somewhat different patterns tend to appear at different birth orders, especially among Anglos.     

Sex of Previous Children and Intentions for Further Births in the United States, 1965-1976

The research reported herein, using samples of women interviewed in the 1965 and 1970 National Fertility Studies and the 1976 National Survey of Family Growth, shows that the sex of women’s previous children has an effect on their subsequent fertility intentions which differs at each parity. The persistence of that effect among women with two children in particular argues strongly for including sex of previous children as an independent variable in models of fertility intentions, since the decline in family size norms makes factors which affect the decision to have (or not have) a third child increasingly important.     

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.     

2000-2010年中国育龄妇女生育完成度变化分析

新中国成立以来,妇女不论在社会活动领域还是家庭领域的地位都有了质的变化。妇女可以参与各种政治、经济、文化娱乐等活动,有的妇女在家庭领域的地位甚至超过了丈夫。尽管妇女受教育程度提高了,但与男性相比还有一定的差距。有研究表明:受教育程度和生育水平呈负相关,尤其是母亲的受教育水平影响更显著。由于教育的影响,妇女的生育水平和生育时间都发生了很大的变化。文章利用最近两次中国人口普查数据来研究育龄妇女的生育年龄的完成度变化情况,并对中国目前TFR很低的现象做了解释,据此推断中国在未来几年的时间,总和生育率会在一定程度上呈上升的变化趋势,但不可能在短期内回升到更替水平。     

Do more-schooled women have fewer children and delay childbearing? Evidence from a sample of US twins

Using data on monozygotic (MZ) (identical) female twins from the Minnesota Twin Registry, we estimate the causal effect of schooling on completed fertility, probability of being childless, and age at first birth using the within-MZ twins methodology. We find strong cross-sectional associations between schooling and the fertility outcomes, and some evidence that more schooling causes women to have fewer children and delay childbearing, though not to the extent that interpreting cross-sectional associations as causal would imply. Our conclusions are robust when taking account of (1) endogenous within-twin pair schooling differences due to reverse causality and (2) measurement error in schooling. We also investigate possible mechanisms and find that the effect of women’s schooling on completed fertility is not mediated through husband’s schooling but may be mediated in part through age at first marriage.