Fertility and socio-economic status in Rural Bangladesh: Differentials and linkages

Summary Socio-economic differentials in fertility are examined by using data collected from a daily registration system covering over 100,000 persons in rural Bangladesh during the period 1968 to 1970. The findings indicate that fertility was generally higher among women in the higher than in the lower socio-economic groups. Several factors associated with high socio-economic status and their relation with the intermediate variables are discussed as providing the linkages with high fertility. These include, health status, breastfeeding, the enforcement of 'purdah' and migration.     

Individual and Community Aspects of Women's Status and Fertility in Rural Bangladesh

Samples from the U.S. passenger lists are used to focus upon the emigrants from England to the U.S.A. during 1841. Probably as many as three-quarters of the English emigrants of that year made the U.S.A. their destination, though only a minority of Irish and Scottish emigrants sailed directly to U.S. ports. The English appear very largely to have spurned the unusual opportunities for assisted emigration to colonies that were available that year. The occupations of male emigrants are compared with occupations reported in the population census of 1841. Farmers, general labourers, and industrial workers, particularly those employed in textile industries, were overrepresented among the emigrants. Yet the movement was not predominantly an exodus of labourers from agriculture, nor from some of the most depressed occupations such as framework knitters and nailers. Various occupational groups are analyzed according to travelling companions, dependants and age, in an effort to distinguish between the more cycle-sensitive groups and those seemingly intent on permanent emigration.     

Variations in Natural Fertility: The Effect of Lactation and Other Determinants

The analysis focuses on average waiting times to a fertile conception, as derived from non-contraceptive exposure in second and higher-order birth intervals. Life-table estimates are derived from exposure in the two-year periods preceding the survey, for 20 surveys in Africa, Asia and Latin America undertaken as part of the WFS programme. Differences in the waiting time to conception are examined as a function of the duration of lactation and post partum abstinence. In addition, the extent to which variations in waiting times are produced by country and regional effects, and effects due to age, duration of marriage and parity are examined. The analysis points out the dangers of deriving estimates of natural fertility from the sub-group of women who never breastfed.     

中国生育率转变的因素分析

阐述了中国生育率由传统的高出生率向近代的低出生率转变的原因,利用邦加兹生育率模式和多元回归分析分别对生育率转变的避孕、人工流产等生物人口学因素,以及都市人口比率、计划生育率等社会经济的因素进行了论述。     

The Determinants of Low Fertility in India

Using a conceptual framework focusing on factors that enhance or reduce fertility relative to desired family size (see Bongaarts 2001), we study fertility variation across time (1992–2006) and space (states) in India. Our empirical analyses use data from three waves of the Indian National Family Health Surveys. We find that this framework can account for a substantial portion of the variation in the total fertility rate (TFR) over time and across states. Our estimates focus attention on the critical components of contemporary Indian fertility, especially desired family size, unwanted fertility, son preference, and fertility postponement.     

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.     

中国的低生育水平及其影响因素

中国已经达到低生育水平,但对真实生育率却一直迷茫,人口规划与宣传口径与实际调查统计长期严重脱节.为了推进低生育水平研究,文章综述了低生育率类型的划分口径,并对若干生育率或出生漏报率的估计从方法上做了简要评论.借鉴国外低生育因素模型,文章对中国具体情况的研究发现:推迟生育对总和生育率具有显著压抑作用;而子女性别偏好对生育率的影响方式已经从多生转向性别导向的人工流产,因而也会显著降低生育率.文章还通过示意性测算表明,在低生育率研究中忽视其他抑制因素便会导致夸大出生漏报对生育率的影响.此外,文章还对近年人口流动对流出地和流入地乃至全国生育率的影响进行了分析.     

Lactation and fertility in Rural Bangladesh

Summary Analysis of data from various phases of a study of post-partum amenorrhoea in Bangladesh illustrated good aggregate consistency of response on menstrual status, but less individual consistency on duration of post-partum amenorrhoea. Using life table techniques, the median duration of amenorrhoea was calculated as 19.9 months for women with births between February and September 1974. There were substantial seasonal variations in duration, with the median decreasing from 21.5 months for women with February births to 16.9 months for those with September births. By contrast, the median duration of post-partum amenorrhoea varies by only two months for women in the lowest and highest quartiles of weight and weight for height. The seasonal pattern was similar for all weight groups.     

中国妇女生育意愿与生育行为的差异及其影响因素

生育行为与生育意愿背离现象广泛存在。在发达国家,普遍的情况是实际生育率大大低于意愿生育率。发展中国家同样出现了生育行为与生育意愿背离的现象,但更多呈现出与发达国家相反的规律。中国也出现了生育行为与生育意愿背离,且实际高于意愿的情况。根据中国2001年全国生殖健康调查,基本完成生育的40~49岁妇女,其平均理想子女数为1.8,而平均实际生育子女数为2.2。利用2001年全国生殖健康调查数据,考察中国妇女生育行为与生育意愿背离的特征和影响因素,并考察个体背景(个人特征和社会经济背景)、生育政策和生育孩子情况(包括孩子的性别结构和存活状况)对生育意愿与生育行为的差异产生的影响。结果表明,这些因素都对生育意愿与生育行为的差异产生显著影响,但性别偏好是造成生育行为大于生育意愿的主要因素。     

The Proximate Determinants of Fertility: Sub-national Variations

In this paper changes in the relative importance of the proximate determinants of fertility, as modernization increases, are analysed Educational attainment and type of place of current residence are used as indicators of modernization. We concentrate on the three most important proximate variables: marriage, contraception and breastfeeding, and the analysis is performed on 29 World Fertility Survey countries. Bongaarts's multiplicative model is used for the analysis but the primary data tapes make it possible to construct more refined estimates of the three indices than is usually possible. The patterns of the indices among the two sets of socio-economic sub-groups are considered, as well as the interrelationships of the indices. Fertility differences among the sub-groups are also decomposed to assess the contribution of the separate proximate determinants to sub-group variations in fertility.     

农村独生子女生育选择影响因素及测度研究——基于Multinomial Logistic模型实证分析

本文基于北京市昌平区的农村独生子女调查数据,利用效用最大化离散选择模型,对农村独生子女生育选择模式及影响因素进行了分析。文章不仅考察了个体因素、经济与社会政策因素对生育选择模式的影响,更重要的是从生育选择的预测概率、离散变化以及Odds Ratios等多角度对影响因素的重要程度、影响大小等进行了定量测度分析。并从中推断起决定作用的因素发生变化时,可能导致的生育意愿、计划与行为的改变,探讨独生子女生育选择对中国未来人口变动趋势产生的影响和政策意义。     

The Activities of the Elderly in Rural Bangladesh

Despite a mounting interest in the elderly, and a rapidly expanding literature on the subject, there is a dearth of empirical research that can shed light on their condition. For Bangladesh and the rest of South Asia, the record is very thin. With the aid of observed and retrospective data on time-use from a sample of rural Bangladeshis, this paper seeks to help redress this situation by describing the role of the elderly in the household division of labour, management, and authority. The objective is to elaborate how labour-use and activity patterns change with advancing age, for men and women and rich and poor, and to explore the broader implications of such change. Concepts of work, retirement, and dependency are critically examined. The results of several labour surveys are used to estimate the limits that the physical effects of ageing place on the labour-force participation of the elderly.     

Fertility decline in Bangladesh: an emerging family planning success story

Bangladesh has a population of 115 million people, and the economic growth rate of 3.7% during the 1980s was undermined by rapid population growth. The annual population growth rate was 3% in the 1960s and early 1970s, 2.5% between 1981-91 decreasing to 2.3% in 1991. The average of number of children is 4.6/woman compared with 7 in the 1960s. Infant mortality dropped from 150/1000 births in 1976 to 118/1000 in 1991. Life expectancy rose from 47 to 54 years. The 1991 Contraceptive Prevalence Survey showed that 39.9% of married women under 50 use contraceptives in 1991 vs. 18.6% in 1981. The use of modern methods increased from 10.9% in 1981 to 31.2% in 1991, while traditional methods rose from 7.7% to 8.7%. Sterilization was most prevalent in 1981. 29,000 female family planning (FP) workers were aggressively engaged in dispensing FP services in 1990. The Social Marketing Company sells pills, condoms, and oral rehydration salts through 130,000 retail outlets. The 1989 Contraceptive Prevalence Survey showed that 40% of pill and condom users obtained them from this network, and 95.4% of women knew about 4 methods of contraception. In 1990 there were 120 private organizations providing contraceptive services. Some of the components of the government FP program include field worker distribution door-to-door of injectable contraceptives (50% injectable usage rate in the Matlab project); recordkeeping activities; a satellite clinic network with access to contraceptive services; and decentralization through the Upazila (subdistrict) approach. The logistics system of FP has improved the warehousing, transportation, and management information system. Foreign aid (mainly USAID) financing of contraceptives helped avert 14.4 million births between 1974-90. The increase of contraceptive prevalence to 50% by 1997 would avert another 21.9 million births during 1991-96 (replacement fertility requires 70% prevalence.     

Sterility in a Population with Natural Fertility

In this paper we examine the age pattern of sterility in a natural fertility population of 16 English parishes. We examine estimators of sterility proposed by historical demographers. We demonstrate through Monte Carolo simulation of reproductive histories that the estimators proposed earlier work well only if the ages to which the estimates pertain are substantially modified from the original formulation. The new estimates show a much larger positive effect of childbearing on sterility than would the earlier ones. We also present estimates of the age pattern of sterility due solely to the process of ageing by eliminating secondary sterility induced by childbearing. This curve rises slowly until age 40, after which the proportion sterile increases rapidly with age. We find no evidence of a sharp rise in the risk of sterility in the 30s. We find strong evidence of a decline in fecundity by examining age-specific fertility rates only for those women who are known to be fecund because they later bear children. The evidence suggests only a moderate decline until ages 35–39 and a much steeper decline thereafter.Finally, we illustrate the danger of the use of a clinical test of infertility commonly employed. We show that if women are judged to be infertile because they have not become pregnant within one year of unprotected exposure, then a large fraction of those so judged will be falsely diagnosed. We conclude that the one-year period is too short.     

Nutrition and Fertility in Bangladesh: Breastfeeding and Post Partum Amenorrhoea

From 1975 to 1980 a prospective study a nearly 2,500 married, fertile women was conducted in Matlab, Bangladesh at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research. Women were interviewed at monthly intervals to collect information on nutritional and reproductive status, in order to study the factors associated with natural fertility. The median duration of amenorrhoea for women with no child deaths was 15.5 months, with older women and those of higher parities recording longer durations than younger women or those of lower parities. Median duration of amenorrhoea for women with six or more years of education was 8.4 months compared to 16.4 months among women with no education. When classified by weight at pregnancy termination, average duration of amenorrhoea of women weighing less than 38 kg was 17.6 months compared to 13.6 months among women weighing more than 44 kg. Proportional hazards analyses show that mother's education, parity, month of birth, supplementation practices and nutritional status were significantly associated with the probability of resuming menstruation.     

Fertility and Life Satisfaction in Rural Ethiopia

Despite recent strong interest in the link between fertility and subjective well-being, the focus has centered on developed countries. For poorer countries, in contrast, the relationship remains rather elusive. Using a well-established panel survey—the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey (ERHS)—we investigate the empirical relationship between fertility and life satisfaction in rural Ethiopia, the largest landlocked country in Africa. Consistent with the fertility theories for developing countries and with the sociodemographic characteristics of rural Ethiopia, we hypothesize that this relationship varies by gender and across life stages, being more positive for men and for parents in old age. Indeed, our results suggest that older men benefit the most in terms of life satisfaction from having a large number of children, while the recent birth of a child is detrimental for the subjective well-being of women at reproductive ages. We address endogeneity issues by using lagged life satisfaction in ordinary least squares regressions, through fixed-effects estimation and the use of instrumental variables.     

Age Misstatement for Young Children in Rural Bangladesh

Age data for 3,393 children, six years of age and under, in rural Bangladesh are analyzed for the level and pattern of age misstatement. Random error, age heaping at whole years, and preferences for particular ages are found in the data. Variation in age reporting is discovered to increase monotonically with age. Systematic errors in age misstatement display modest overstatement for the first four years of life and more pronounced understatement for ages 4, 5, and 6. Age misstatement is examined for its effect on one indicator often used in nutritional surveillance—weight-for-age of children. The impact of the various types of age misstatement (a) increases the difficulty of interpreting weight-for-age and (b) obscures accurate understanding of malnutrition in Bangladeshi children.     

Birth Intervals and Childhood Mortality in Rural Bangladesh

This study investigates the relationship between birth intervals and childhood mortality, using longitudinal data from rural Bangladesh known to be of exceptional accuracy and completeness. Results demonstrate significant but very distinctive effects of the previous and subsequent birth intervals on mortality, with the former concentrated in the neonatal period and the latter during early childhood. The impact of short birth intervals on mortality, however, is substantially less than that found in many previous studies of this issue, particularly for the previous birth interval. The findings are discussed in terms of the potential for family planning programs to contribute to improved child survival in settings such as Bangladesh.