Reflections on Recent Levels and Trends of Fertility and Mortality in Egypt

This paper discusses a probability model of birth intervals, proposed by K. Srinivasan, for the study of data collected in some fertility surveys.

New formulae for mean and variance of the “open interval” distribution are given.     

Fertility Cycles: A Note on Onset and Periodicity

The fertility transition was completed in Concord, Mass., by the end of the war of 1812. Thereafter, there has been baby boom-baby bust cyclicality, a rhythm clearly demonstrated by the use of modern methods of digital spectral analysis.     

我国妇女生育推迟与近期生育水平变化

随着我国时期生育水平的下降,我国妇女的平均生育年龄自20世纪90年代以来呈现上升的趋势。在这样的情况下,传统的时期总和生育率的估计受到进度效应的影响,人们从这一指标中难以对我国近期生育水平的变化形成正确的认识。本文利用多来源可靠数据,对我国近期的总和生育率以及去进度效应总和生育率进行了估计,发现去除进度效应影响后,生育水平的时期估计值有了大幅度上升,2007²012年的生育水平大约在1.7至1.8之间。研究进一步重构了19642012年的生育水平大约在1.7至1.8之间。研究进一步重构了1964¹985年出生队列的部分年龄别生育率,发现年轻队列的峰值年龄别生育率较低,但在较高年龄时会出现年龄别生育率相较之前队列升高的现象。文章进一步探讨了我国生育政策对于妇女生育行为的影响以及政策变动可能带来的时期生育率的变化。     

China's Below‐Replacement Fertility: Recent Trends and Future Prospects

Between 1970 and 1990, China experiencoed a rapid and sharp fertility decline—from total fertility rates of approximately six births to two. The degree to which Chinese fertility has continued to fall after 1990 is controversial. We use survey data from the 1997 National Population and Reproductive Health Survey and from the 2001 Reproductive Health and Family Planning Survey to document recent trends in Chinese fertility. Our estimates provide further evidence that China's fertility is well below‐replacement level at the turn of the twenty‐first century—with TFR levels of approximately 1.5 children per woman. Trends in parity‐specific cohort fertility by age also suggest below replacement completed fertility for cohorts still in the childbearing years. In the article's second section, we identify key components of low period fertility in order to frame our discussion of two questions: 1) in what ways is Chinese low fertility different from/similar to that in other low‐fertility countries? And 2) what are the likely future trends in Chinese fertility?     

中国低生育水平下的生育意愿与生育行为差异研究

在国家实行全面两孩政策背景下,认清生育意愿与生育行为的差异,是把握中国未来人口形势变化的关键。文章利用2010年以来的四次全国性抽样调查原始数据,对中国育龄人群的生育意愿与生育行为的差异及影响因素进行分析。研究发现:中国目前意愿生育水平在1.82~1.88的区间范围内,其点估计值在1.86左右,已显著低于更替水平;越年轻的出生队列其生育意愿越低,中国未来的意愿生育水平可能会继续降低;育龄人群的意愿生育水平要显著高于其终身生育水平,且二者差异随年龄的减小呈递增趋势,中国未来生育水平存在进一步下降的可能性;没有生育政策限制下的终身生育水平仅为1.68,这可以作为生育政策调整对中国生育水平影响的上限。生育政策对当前育龄人群生育意愿与生育水平差异的贡献度在33%左右,全面两孩政策对中国生育水平的提升作用有限。     

Trends in Education-Specific Life Expectancy,Data Quality,and Shifting Education Distributions: A Note on Recent Research

Several recent articles have reported conflicting conclusions about educational differences in life expectancy, and this is partly due to the use of unreliable data subject to a numerator-denominator bias previously reported as ranging from 20 % to 40 %. This article presents estimates of life expectancy and lifespan variation by education in the United States using more reliable data from the National Health Interview Survey. Contrary to prior conclusions in the literature, I find that life expectancy increased or stagnated since 1990 among all education-race-sex groups except for non-Hispanic white women with less than a high school education; there has been a robust increase in life expectancy among white high school graduates and a smaller increase among black female high school graduates; lifespan variation did not increase appreciably among high school graduates; and lifespan variation plays a very limited role in explaining educational gradients in mortality. I also discuss the key role that educational expansion may play in driving future changes in mortality gradients. Because of shifting education distributions, within an education-specific synthetic cohort, older age groups are less negatively selected than younger age groups. We could thus expect a greater concentration of mortality at younger ages among people with a high school education or less, which would be reflected in increasing lifespan variability for this group. Future studies of educational gradients in mortality should use more reliable data and should be mindful of the effects of shifting education distributions.     

Second Births and the Second Shift: A Research Note on Gender Equity and Fertility

In a set of propositions on fertility transition, Peter McDonald recently proposed that the decline from replacement‐level fertility to low fertility is associated with a combination of high levels of gender equity in individual‐oriented institutions, such as education and market employment, and low levels of gender equity in the family and family‐oriented institutions. Similarly, the “second shift,” or the share of domestic work performed by formally employed women, forms a critical piece of current cross‐national explanations for low fertility. Building on this scholarship, the authors explore whether there is empirical evidence at the individual level for a relationship between gender equity at home, as indicated by the division of housework among working couples with one child, and the transition to a second birth. Results, based on a sample of US couples, indicate a U‐shaped relationship between gender equity and fertility. Both the most modern and the most traditional housework arrangements are positively associated with fertility. This empirical test elaborates the family‐fertility relationship and underscores the need to incorporate family context, including gender equity, into explanations for fertility change.     

Trends and Compositional Changes in Fertility: California Circa 1970–1990

Since 1970 California has been the prime destination of the high numbers of both legal and illegal U.S. entrants. Fertility consequences have been dramatic. Births to U.S.-born women, after the decline in the 1970s and mild rebound in the 1980s, neared the 1970 level of 325,000. Yet total births rose from 360,000 to 600,000 in 1992. White non-Hispanic women bore nearly 70% of births in 1970 but 38% in 1992; Hispanic women, 20% in 1970 and 44% in 1992; others (primarily Asian ancestry), 3% and 10% respectively; and blacks, 9% and 7.5%. In the same period the proportion of births to U.S. natives fell from 89% to 56%; that to Mexican nationals rose from 7% to 27% (a six-fold increase absolutely); and that to women of all other birthplaces rose from 3% to 18%. Filipino women (the second largest category of foreign-born women) have borne 2% of all births since 1980. The increase in Mexican-born mothers was especially sharp after 1985, while the estimated Hispanic TFR rose 30% to 3.5 children per woman. In 1992 California's TFR was 2.42—18% above the U.S. average. In 1970 nearly 95% of teen mothers were U.S.-born, and 20% were Hispanic. In 1992, 61% of teen mothers were U.S. nationals; 60% were Hispanic, over half of them Mexican-born. The large increase in births in the 1980s, especially those to cultures supporting early childbearing, presages a sharp increase in births beginning in 2000. Meanwhile, the 5 years' median schooling of Mexican migrants has resulted in a parallel decline in parental education. Given the positive correlation of parental education and school achievement and attainment, California can expect a decline in the latter and hence lower labor productivity, incomes, and tax revenues by the young adults of the twenty-first century.     

Modernization and Tradition in the Recent History of Italian Fertility

The secular decline of Italian fertility, started in the last decade of the nineteenth century, came to an end in the early 1950'sand has recovered slightly in the last fifteen years. Italian experience seems to follow, with a twenty-year lag, the experience of the more advanced western European populations. At present, with an average of 2.5 children per marriage, Italian fertility is very close to the French and to the average European level.At the regional level, two contrasting patterns can be detected. On one side stands the very low fertility of the North and of the Center, mostly below replacement in the last thirty years;on the other, the still high fertility of the South.In the North and in the Center, where the decline started earlier, fertility has fallen well below replacement level in the last thirty years. In the South, where the decline started in the late 1920's and early 1930's, a large family system still prevails, and the spreading of voluntary control faces barriers setup by a long historyof cultural isolation,attachment to tradition and religion. In the last 15 years, however, the gap has narrowed slowly, more because of an upturn of fertility in the North and in the Center than because of the decline in the South.Another interesting feature of Italian fertility is low class differentials: the fertility of the most prolific segment (farmers, farm laborers) is only 20 percent higher than the fertility of the less prolific professional groups. Finally, Italian experience provides an interesting example of the changing relationship linking the economic level of the population and fertility changes; in 1931-51 a negative correlation linked the changes in fertility to the economic level of the region, while in 1951-61 and 1961-66 a very high and positive correlation can be observed.As for the future trends in fertility, two factors may have an important role. In the first place, on the one hand, the economic policy of the government, aiming at reducing the economic gap between the South and the rest of the country, may accelerate the leveling of regional fertility differentials. The same effect, on the other hand, may be reached by more liberal legislation, now under way, for birth control and family planning propaganda.     

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.     

Cross-Section Studies As Predictors of Trends in Birth Rates: A Note on Ekanem’s Results

Ekanem has shown that variations in socioeconomic development are associated with differences in birth rates. However, he has made no attempt to determine if his regression equations can be used to predict trends in fertility. This note shows that, using Ekanem’s data, the factors he found most significant in explaining differences in fertility playa minor role over time whereas per capita income, which he found to be relatively insignificant in explaining variations cross-sectionally, has a statistically significant impact over time .     

Corn and crisis: Malthus on the high price of provisions

In 1799 Malthus spent six months in Scandinavia. There he witnessed the extreme deprivation, misery, and mortality that were once the common accompaniments of a bad harvest. On his return to England he found that the topic of the day was the exceptionally high price of bread, which threatened both political turmoil and human suffering. In the event, suffering even among the very poor was far less than in Sweden, though the increase in the price of the chief bread grain was greater. Malthus was intrigued by this apparent paradox. In An investigation of the cause of the present high price of provisions, published in 1800, he resolved it using arguments similar to those developed recently by Amartya Sen in his exposition of the concept of “entitlements.” In spite of his principled opposition to the poor laws, Malthus conceded that their effectiveness in transfering purchasing power to those most in need was a major reason for the limited impact of the dearth.     

符合二胎政策妇女的生育意愿和生育行为差异——基于计划行为理论的实证研究

文章通过对"江苏省群众生育意愿和生育行为调查"的2007年基线和2010年跟踪数据中符合生育二胎政策妇女的分析,从社会心理学入手,以计划行为理论为支撑,重新架构生育意愿到生育行为的理论框架,从微观视角来研究当政策赋予人们生育二胎权利时,妇女生育意愿和生育行为之间的差异及其影响因素。研究结果表明,该地区符合生育二胎政策的妇女中,四成妇女的生育意愿高于生育行为,六成妇女的生育意愿等于生育行为,尚没有妇女的生育意愿低于生育行为。当的确面临是否生育二胎的选择时,妇女会进行理性考虑,生育态度、主观规范和行为控制都对生育意愿和生育行为的差异产生显著影响。同时,生育计划的制定是实现生育意愿的重要推动力。     

Mapping the Timing,Pace, and Scale of the Fertility Transition in Brazil

Between 1960 and 2000, fertility fell sharply in Brazil, but this transition was unevenly distributed in space and time. Using Bayesian spatial statistical methods and microdata from five censuses, we develop and apply a procedure for fitting logistic curves to the fertility transitions in more than 500 small regions of Brazil over this 40‐year period. Doing so enables us to map the main features of the Brazilian fertility transition in considerable detail. We detect early declines in some regions of the country and document large differences between early and late transitions in regard to both the initial level of fertility and the speed of the transition. We also use our results to test hypotheses regarding changes in the level of development at the onset of the fertility transition and identify a temporary stall in the Brazilian transition that occurred in the late 1990s. A web site with project details is at http://schmert.net/BayesLogistic .