High Fertility and Children's Schooling in Ghana: Sex Differences in Parental Contributions and Educational Outcomes

This paper explores the linkages at the family level between sustained high fertility and children's schooling in Ghana, in the context of a constrained economic environment and rising school fees. The unique feature of the paper is its exploration of the operational significance of alternative definitions of “sib size” – the number of “same-mother” siblings and “same-father” siblings – in relation to enrolment, grade attainment, and school drop-out for boys and girls of primary and secondary school age. The analysis is based on the first wave of the Ghana Living Standards Measurement Survey (GLSS) data, collected in 1987–88. The results of the statistical analysis lead to the conclusion that the co-existence of high fertility, rising school costs, and economic reversals is having a negative impact on the education of girls, in terms of drop-out rates and grade attainment. Some of the costs of high fertility are borne by older siblings (particularly girls) rather than by parents, with the result that children from larger families experience greater inequality between themselves and their siblings by sex and birth order. Because fathers have more children on average than mothers, the inequality between their children appears to be even greater than between mothers' children, particularly given the importance of fathers' role in the payment of school fees. The paper concludes that the greatest cost for children in Ghana of sustained high fertility is likely to be the reinforcement of traditional sex roles, largely a product of high fertility in the past.     

Attitudes About Children and Fertility Limitation Behavior

The relationship between attitudes and individual behavior is at the core of virtually all demographic theories of fertility. This paper extends our understanding of fertility behavior by exploring how psychic costs of childbearing and contraceptive use, conceptualized as attitudes about children and contraception, are related to the transition from high fertility and little contraceptive use to lower fertility and wide spread contraceptive use. Using data from rural Nepal, I examine models of the relationship between multiple, setting-specific attitudes about children and contraception and the hazard of contraceptive use to limit childbearing. Specific attitude measures attempt to capture the relative value of children versus consumer goods, the religiously based value of children, and the acceptability of contraceptive use. Findings demonstrate that multiple measures of women’s attitudes about children and contraception were all independently related to their fertility limitation behavior.     

外来人口与子女保健和早期教育──海淀区外来人口0-3岁儿童父母对子女保健和教育调查

近年来对于外来人口的相关研究常见于报刊杂志,但将外来人口的子女作为研究对象的有关研究却并不多见。本文根据近期一项海淀区外来人口０－３岁外来人口子女的保健和教育调查,就目前外来人口子女的儿童期保健和早期教育的现状,以及影响因素,作一研究分析。     

Fertility Transitions and Schooling: From Micro- to Macro-Level Associations

Research on the schooling implications of fertility transitions often faces an aggregation problem: despite policy interest in macro-level outcomes, empirical studies usually focus on the micro-level effects of sibsize on schooling. This article proposes an aggregation framework for moving from micro- to macro-level associations between fertility and schooling. The proposed framework is an improvement over previous aggregation methods in that it considers concurrent changes in the effects of sibsize, socioeconomic context, and family structure. The framework is illustrated with data from six sub-Saharan countries. Possible extensions are discussed.     

A Longitudinal Analysis of the Relationship Between Fertility Timing and Schooling

This article quantifies the contribution of pre-treatment dynamic selection to the relationship between fertility timing and postsecondary attainment, after controlling for a rich set of predetermined characteristics. Eventual mothers and nonmothers are matched using their predicted birth hazard rate, which shares the desirable properties of a propensity score but in a multivalued treatment setting. I find that eventual mothers and matched nonmothers enter college at the same rate, but their educational paths diverge well before the former become pregnant. This pre-pregnancy divergence creates substantial differences in ultimate educational attainment that cannot possibly be due to the childbirth itself. Controls for predetermined characteristics and fixed effects do not address this form of dynamic selection bias. A dynamic model of the simultaneous childbirth-education sequencing decision is necessary to address it.     

The Impact of College Education on Fertility: Evidence for Heterogeneous Effects

As college-going among women has increased, more women are going to college from backgrounds that previously would have precluded their attendance and completion. This affords us the opportunity and motivation to look at the effects of college on fertility across a range of social backgrounds and levels of early achievement. Despite a substantial literature on the effects of education on women’s fertility, researchers have not assessed variation in effects by selection into college. With data on U.S. women from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we examine effects of timely college attendance and completion on women’s fertility by the propensity to attend and complete college using multilevel Poisson and discrete-time event-history models. Disaggregating the effects of college by propensity score strata, we find that the fertility-decreasing college effect is concentrated among women from comparatively disadvantaged social backgrounds and low levels of early achievement. The effects of college on fertility attenuate as we observe women from backgrounds that are more predictive of college attendance and completion.     

社会流动机制的转变对农村生育率的影响

随着我国由计划经济向市场经济转型、从传统社会向现代社会转变,农民的社会流动机制发生了变迁。社会流动机制的转变必然导致经济、社会诸多变量的变动,而经济和社会变量的变化又影响着生育行为。本文从宏观层面探讨了社会流动机制的变迁对农村生育率的影响。     

中国婚姻结构与生育控制对生育水平的影响分析——基于简化的邦戈茨中间变量生育率模型

利用易于获取资料的、简化的邦戈茨中间变量生育率模型分析不同时期生育控制和婚姻结构对生育水平的影响。结果表明,在生育水平下降的前期(1970~1990年),其主要影响因素是生育控制,而在生育水平下降的后期(1990~1999年),主要影响因素则是婚姻结构。在新世纪(2000~2008年)生育水平的小幅度上升中,婚姻结构和生育控制对生育水平的影响大致相当。婚姻结构和生育控制对生育水平的影响规律可从文化堕距理论中得到有力阐释。     

生育与死亡转变对人口老龄化和老年抚养的影响

上海、北京和天津市在20世纪都经历了生育率急剧下降和预期寿命大幅度上升。生育率和死亡率的这些变化形成并将继续形成大量的老年人口。文章分析了这三大城市及中国的老年人口状况和未来的增长趋势,并就中国及这三个城市的人口趋势对老年抚养的影响进行讨论。     

在校工作经验对教育投资回报的影响——以哈尔滨市劳动力市场问卷调查为例

传统明瑟收入函数中收入取决于个人受教育程度、潜在市场工作经验和潜在市场工作经验平方项,其中受教育程度由受教育年限代表,不包含在校读书期间工作经验,然而,学生在毕业前往往能积累一定工作经验.因此,教育收益估计值包含了在校工作经验收益,导致教育收益估计值存在偏差.为了消除教育收益率估计偏差,使用哈尔滨市就业市场问卷调查数据,估算了两个收入方程——含在校工作经验变量的收入方程和不含有在校工作经验变量的收入方程.估算结果显示,后者较前者在教育投资回报系数上高出28%-44%(取决于对能力偏差的控制程度),这些结果表明传统明瑟收入函数过分夸大了个人受教育程度对收入的影响.     

关于外来人口分母效应的再讨论

本文就梁秋生对京津沪的外来人口分母效应检验提出的反质疑做出说明,并补充了采用新的划分口径和采用其他数据进一步检验的结果。新划分口径的检验和更大数据样本的检验仍然表明京津沪三城市中外来人口分母效应并不像他所推算得那样显著,本地妇女的总和生育率仍显著低于1·0。本文还指出了梁秋生在计算北京平均生育年龄变化时的错误、以及他在把握生育年龄变化方面的误解,并探讨了在理解当前总体生育水平方面时生育进度效应与外来人口分母效应的层面问题,以及外来人口分母效应能够得以体现的必要条件问题。本文将梁秋生对京津沪外来人口分母效应推算中应用的假设与五普1‰样本数据的相应统计结果进行了具体比较,指出他在推导在校学生性别年龄分布时可能产生的漏洞及其影响。     

对新型生育文化效应的实证分析

新型生育文化是一种与传统生育文化既有联系又有根本区别的现代生育文化 ,它的效应的产生和发挥对人口与社会经济发展具有十分突出的意义。本文对我国新型生育文化效应发挥情况进行了初步的实证研究 ,主要涉及到新型生育文化效应的指标设置、运用、问卷调查分析以及促进效应有效发挥的模式特征。     

论生育文化和生育文明

生育文明中表现了生育文化的种种现象和活动,生育文化也体现了生育文明的历史轨迹、进程和内容。生育文化的发展表现了不同时期人类生育文明的进步与发展,不体现生育文化内涵的生育文明显然是不存在的。然而,严格说来,生育文化和生育文明是既有密切联系,又有一定区别的两个不完全等同的概念。正确认识和理解生育文化和生育文明的概念、内涵、功能及其相互关系,对于推动新时期人口计生工作的深入发展,进一步开展人口和计划生育的理论研究,具有十分重要的意义和作用。     

The Effect of Fertility Reduction on Economic Growth

We assess quantitatively the effect of exogenous reductions in fertility on output per capita. Our simulation model allows for effects that run through schooling, the size and age structure of the population, capital accumulation, parental time input into childrearing, and crowding of fixed natural resources. The model is parameterized using a combination of microeconomic estimates and standard components of quantitative macroeconomic theory. We apply the model to examine the effect of a change in fertility from the UN medium‐variant to the UN low‐variant projection in Nigeria. For a base case set of parameters, we find that such a change would raise output per capita by 5.6 percent at a horizon of 20 years and by 11.9 percent at a horizon of 50 years. We conclude with a discussion of the quantitative significance of these results.     

The Schooling of Offspring and the Survival of Parents

Contemporary stratification research on developed societies usually views the intergenerational transmission of educational advantage as a one-way effect from parent to child. However, parents’ investment in their offspring’s schooling may yield significant returns for parents themselves in later life. For instance, well-educated offspring have greater knowledge of health and technology to share with their parents and more financial means to provide for them than do their less-educated counterparts. We use data from the 1992–2006 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine whether adult offspring’s educational attainments are associated with parents’ survival in the United States. We show that adult offspring’s educational attainments have independent effects on their parents’ mortality, even after controlling for parents’ own socioeconomic resources. This relationship is more pronounced for deaths that are linked to behavioral factors: most notably, chronic lower respiratory disease and lung cancer. Furthermore, at least part of the association between offspring’s schooling and parents’ survival may be explained by parents’ health behaviors, including smoking and physical activity. These findings suggest that one way to influence the health of the elderly is through their offspring. To harness the full value of schooling for health, then, a family and multigenerational perspective is needed.     

The estimation of Unwanted Fertility

The estimation of unwanted fertility is a major objective of demographic surveys, including DHS surveys conducted in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Levels and trends in unwanted fertility are important input to the formulation of population policy and the evaluation of family planning programs. Yet existing methods for estimating unwanted fertility are known to be defective, among other reasons because they rely on subjective data whose validity and reliability are questionable. In this article, we propose a new estimator of unwanted fertility-the "aggregate prospective estimator"--so named because it depends on the stated preference for another child at the time of the survey, the fertility-desires item consistently shown to possess the highest validity and reliability. Under reasonable assumptions, the aggregate prospective estimator produces less biased estimates of unwanted fertility than the most widely used existing methods. The new estimator has the limitation of generating only aggregate-level estimates, but such estimates are the primary data for policy formulation and program evaluation. The new estimator is presented in this article, along with an evaluation of its underlying assumptions and its sensitivity to several sources of error. In an illustrative application to recent DHS data from six countries, the new estimator yields substantially higher estimates of unwanted fertility than existing methods in all six countries.     

Schooling and Factors Affecting Decisions on Schooling by Household Members in the Rural Areas of Turkey

Despite the fact that rural education has always been one of the most important means of rural development, it has been ignored in many developing countries, with the result that rural development has not achieved great success. The problems of education in rural areas are not only related to the amount the country spends on education or to the system of education. The socio-economic condition of the individuals living in these areas and the form of rural education also play an important part. The present study deals with the socio-economic factors that influence the education level which is achieved. The assessments in the study are based on data gathered in a survey of 386 households carried out in the Aegean Region of Turkey. The work consists of three parts: the state of education in rural areas; the factors adversely affecting an individual’s decision to continue at school; and the employment situation of individuals who did not continue their education. In the results section, some suggestions have been made regarding the provision of employment opportunities to individuals who have not completed their education and who have had no job training.     

The Effects of Intrauterine Malnutrition on Birth and Fertility Outcomes: Evidence From the 1974 Bangladesh Famine

This article uses the Bangladesh famine of 1974 as a natural experiment to estimate the impact of intrauterine malnutrition on sex of the child and infant mortality. In addition, we estimate the impact of malnutrition on post-famine pregnancy outcomes. Using the 1996 Matlab Health and Socioeconomic Survey (MHSS), we find that women who were pregnant during the famine were less likely to have male children. Moreover, children who were in utero during the most severe period of the Bangladesh famine were 32 % more likely to die within one month of birth compared with their siblings who were not in utero during the famine. Finally, we estimate the impacts of the famine on subsequent pregnancy outcomes. Controlling for pre-famine fertility, we find that women who were pregnant during the famine experienced a higher number of stillbirths in the post-famine years. This increase appears to be driven by an excess number of male stillbirths.     

Partner + Children = Happiness? The Effects of Partnerships and Fertility on Well‐Being

Economic and rational‐choice theories suggest that individuals form unions or have children because these decisions increase their subjective well‐being or “happiness.” We investigate this relation using within‐MZ (identical) twin pair estimates to control for unobserved factors, such as optimistic preferences, that may simultaneously affect happiness, partnerships, and fertility. Our findings, based on Danish twins aged 25–45 and 50–70 years old, include the following. (1) Currently being in a partnership has large positive effects on happiness. (2) A first child substantially increases well‐being, in analyses without controls for partnerships, and males enjoy an almost 75 percent larger happiness gain from a first‐born son than from a first‐born daughter; however, only females enjoy a happiness gain from the first‐born child with controls for partnerships. (3) Additional children beyond the first child have a negative effect on subjective well‐being for females, while there is no effect for males. (4) Ever having had children does not significantly affect the subjective well‐being of males or females aged 50–70 years.