Religion,socialization, and fertility

Longitudinal data from a large .sample of Wisconsin men and women are used to examine the effects on fertility of religious and secular socialization, including farm upbringing. Analyses of children ever born (CEB) and of parity progression show that current religious choice is more important in explaining fertility than is religion of orientation or denomination of secondary school. The effects of current and background religion are additive, and the effect of current religion is the same for men as for women at each parity progression. Catholic religious background affects fertility primarily by increasing the likelihood of having a third or fourth child; its indirect effects on fertility operate through religious schooling and current religious affiliation. Unlike religious background, the positive influence of farm background on fertility persists among men and women, even when current farm employment is controlled.     

Bargaining over family size: The determinants of fertility in Brazil

Understanding how households make fertility decisions is important to implementing effective policy to slow population growth. Most empirical studies of this decision are based on household models in which men and women are assumed to act as if they have the same preferences for the number of children. However, if men and women have different preferences regarding fertility and are more likely to assert their own preferences as their bargaining power in the household increases, policies to lower fertility rates may be more effectively targeted toward one spouse or the other. In this paper, we test the relevance of the single preferences model by investigating whether men and women's nonwage incomes have the same effects on the number of children in the household. We find that while increases in both the man and woman's nonwage income lower the number of children in the household, an equivalent increase in the woman's income has a significantly stronger effect than the man's. In addition, we find that increases in women's nonwage transfer income have the strongest effects on the fertility decisions of women with low levels of education. The most important policy implication of our results is that policies aimed at increasing the incomes of the least-educated women will be the most effective in lowering fertility rates.     

Land,Fertility, and the Population Establishment

Attempts to demonstrate the dependence of fertility decline in the Third World on radical change have often depended on simplistic statistical analyses. Here some of the data used to explore the relationship between fertility, and land size and ownership, are re-examined. It is concluded that the land-fertility hypotheses of Stokes and Schutjer are not supported by the evidence, but that such analyses are inherently inconclusive and ambiguous. Instead, an understanding of the wider institutional context is called for. The Population Establishment – foreign and international donors supporting population programmes and research – recruits an intelligentsia to validate its activities. The philosophy of this intelligentsia is examined and rejected through an analysis of ideas it derives from the World Fertility Survey and the Matlab family planning project. It is concluded that the Establishment perpetuates rapid population growth by legitimizing unpopular and elitist governments, and by misleading them to believe that fertility decline can, indeed, occur in a political economy of inequality and injustice.     

Residence background,migration, and fertility

This paper attempts to clarify confusion concerning residence background and migration, and to demonstrate that each of these factors exerts an independent effect on fertility. Basic premises underlying the direction of the effect of these variables on fertility are examined. Data from the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity indicate that migration and residence background do have independent effects. It is concluded that present generalizations as to the direction of their influence should be submitted to closer scrutiny with additional data in the future. In addition, an index of rural exposure is developed to test the proposition that fertility varies directly with degree of rural experience. The data only partially support this hypothesis. Moreover, rural-to-urban migrants are found to have only slightly higher fertility than the receiving urban-origin population.     

Growth of U.S. population, 1940–1971, in the light of an interactive two-sex model

Since it is logically impossible to hold constant both male and female age-specific fertility rates, the intrinsic growth rates or the net reproduction rates for males and females, based on that assumption, are internally inconsistent. The interactive two-sex model presented in this paper holds constant a set of bivariate age-specific fertility rates by age of men and women and allows the male and female age-specific fertility rates to adjust themselves to achieve stability. The model gives the same intrinsic growth rate for both sexes and generates intrinsic age-specific fertility rates and intrinsic net reproduction rates for males and females which are consistent and can operate simultaneously on a population. The model is applied to the U.S. data for 1940–1971, and the results are compared with those obtained from the one-sex models.     

Evolving Fertility Goals and Behaviors in Current U.S. Childbearing Cohorts

In the post-Recession era, U.S. fertility rates have continued to fall. It is unclear if these declines are driven by shifts in fertility goals or growing difficulty in achieving goals. In this paper, we construct synthetic cohorts of men and women to examine both cross-cohort and within-cohort changes in fertility goals using multiple cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth. Although more recent cohorts exhibit lower achieved fertility at younger ages than earlier cohorts at the same age, intended parity remains around two children, and intentions to remain childless rarely exceed 15 percent. There is weak evidence of a growing fertility gap in the early 30s, suggesting more recent cohorts will need considerable childbearing in the 30s and early 40s to “catch up” to earlier goals, yet low-parity women in their early 40s are decreasingly likely to have unfulfilled fertility desires or intentions to have children. Low-parity men in their early 40s, though, are increasingly likely to intend children. Declines in U.S. fertility thus seem to be largely driven not by changes in early-life fertility goals so much as either a decreasing likelihood of achieving earlier goals or, perhaps, shifts in the preferred timing of fertility that depress period measures.     

Reporting of fertility events by men and women in rural Gambia

We conducted a survey of male and female fertility in rural villages in The Gambia and compared men and women's reports of recent pregnancy events in the aggregate and of children ever born for matched couples. Despite widespread polygyny and sex differences in fertility, men's and women's reports were similar. Small sex differences in reports of recent stillbirths and neonatal deaths were found. For matched couples, husbands reported 0.23 more children ever born than their wives on average, but discordant reporting had little effect on recent marital fertility rates. Modeling of discordant reports indicates that fertility reports are more likely to be underestimated by both men and women for their earliest marriages. Reliable fertility data can be collected from men in this population.     

The intelligence of Twins. A comparative study of eleven-year-old twins. II

The scores of about one thousand Scottish eleven-year-old twins on a group intelligence test are compared with those of a similar group of about seven thousand non-twin children. The average score of the twins is found to be significantly lower than that of the non-twins. This difference is examined in connexion with the age of the child's mother, the degree of overcrowding in the home, and the occupation of the father. The mothers of the twins are found to be significantly older than those of the non-twins. The relationship of twinning and fertility is examined. There is also a slight predominance of twins in the higher social classes. Despite differences in family structure and social environment, the twins remain of lower average. intelligence throughout.     

Socioeconomic Differences in Multipartner Fertility Among Norwegian Men

This article analyzes male fertility, with a particular focus on multipartner fertility, for cohorts born 1955 to 1984 in Norway. We find that socioeconomically disadvantaged men have the lowest chance of becoming fathers and the lowest likelihood of fathering multiple children in stable unions. Multipartner fertility, on the other hand, is positively associated with both disadvantage and advantage: higher-order birth risks with a new partner are more prevalent among men with low as well as high socioeconomic status. An intervening factor among disadvantaged men may be a higher union dissolution risk, and an elevated risk among advantaged men may be associated with their higher preferences for children and other features that make these men more attractive to women as partners and fathers of future children.     

A model of numbers of births in three countries,with persistent forty-year cycles

This paper describes a model which relates fertility to partner availability, an aspect of relative cohort size. Partner availability is affected by the tendency for males to reproduce at a later age than females. For women born at a time of rising birth rates, there is a shortage of slightly older men as potential partners. Women born when birthrates are falling enjoy a surplus of older men from which to choose. This model is believed to be the first non-linear demographic feedback model involving feedbacks through marriage squeezes in which empirically estimated values of the parameters imply persistent limit cycles. The deterministic model makes births in each five-year period a function of births in previous five-year periods. The form of the function is chosen to model the effect of partner availability upon entry into reproductive relationships, and therefore on age-specific fertility. Marriage rates are not modeled directly. The model was developed from data for more than a century from England and Wales, New Zealand, and the US. The demographic transition is modeled with a logistic function and age-specific fertility rates are estimated using lognormal distributions. The stepwise inclusion of a partner availability estimate in the model showed that it accounts for 29% of otherwise unexplained variance. Projected future births stabilize in sustained or limit cycles with periods a little longer than 40 years, and amplitudes of at least 7% of the mean. The necessary conditions for cycle persistence are outlined on a graph of maximum and minimum fertility parameters.     

Relative Income,Race, and Fertility

If a white husband's income is higher than expected for men of his age, race, education, job characteristics, and region, economic theory predicts higher complete fertility for his wife. In the present study one per cent public use samples from the 1970 Census for California and Hawaii were used to examine the effect of relative income on Japanese, Chinese, and black fertility. Relative income was defined in two ways: (1) with regard to earnings of husbands of the same race, education, employment, and state; (2) with regard to earnings of white husbands of the same education, employment, and state. High relative incomes defined in each way were associated with increased completed fertility of Japanese and Chinese in Hawaii, where Orientals form a majority. Neither definition of high relative income was associated with the completed fertility of Japanese, Chinese, or blacks in California, where non-whites form a minority. The results suggest that the effect of relative income on fertility for a racial group will be positive only where there are few racial barriers to their attainment of high incomes.     

Fertility decline in the modern world and in the original demographic transition: Testing three theories with cross-national data

This study uses aggregate data on a large number of the world's societies to test three theories of fertility decline in the modern world and in the original demographic transition. One prominent theory relates fertility decline to the changing economic value of children. With industrialization and overall modernization the economic value of children's labor shifts from positive to negative. This interpretation has been challenged by those who claim that the flow of wealth in preindustrial societies is always from parent to child rather than from child to parent. An alternative interpretation is that fertility levels reflect people's efforts to promote their reproductive success, and that this requires the careful tracking of infant and child mortality. Fertility rates are adjusted to the rate of infant and child survival, and will be high when survival rates are low and low when survival rates are high. A third theory emphasizes female empowerment. Fertility will be high when women are highly subordinated to men, but as women gain more autonomy and control over their own lives they reduce their fertility levels because, among other possibilities, higher levels of fertility present them with serious burdens. We tested all three theories through multiple regression analyses performed on two samples of societies, the first a large sample of the world's nation-states during the period between 1960 and 1990, and the second a sample of now-developed societies between 1880 and 1940. Our findings showed that infant mortality was an excellent predictor of fertility, and that female empowerment was a good predictor. However, there was only weak support for the argument that the economic value of children's labor plays an important role in fertility decisions. The findings were discussed in the context of a broader interpretation of fertility behavior in societies with high levels of industrialization and modernization.     

Involuntary childlessness and voluntary fertility control during the fertility transition: Evidence from men who graduated from an American college

Abstract. Influences on the fertility of men during the American fertility decline are examined using a sample of about 1700 married men born between 1830 and 1880, all of whom attended Amherst College, Massachusetts. We consider two types of reduced fertility: involuntary childlessness as a function of health in early adulthood, and voluntary fertility control as a function of access to contraceptive technology. The relation between health, as measured by body mass index, and childlessness was nonlinear, with average sized men significantly more likely ever to father children than thin or bulky men. Among men who ever fathered a child, physicians fathered significantly fewer children while having probabilities of childlessness that were statistically indistinguishable from those of other men. Physicians may have had greater access to relatively new contraceptive technologies, which suggests a role for voluntary fertility control.     

The Effect of Childhood Family Size on Fertility in Adulthood: New Evidence From IV Estimation

Although fertility is positively correlated across generations, the causal effect of children’s experience with larger sibships on their own fertility in adulthood is poorly understood. With the sex composition of the two firstborn children as an instrumental variable, we estimate the effect of sibship size on adult fertility using high-quality data from Norwegian administrative registers. Our study sample is all firstborns or second-borns during the 1960s in Norwegian families with at least two children (approximately 110,000 men and 104,000 women). An additional sibling has a positive effect on male fertility, mainly causing them to have three children themselves, but has a negative effect on female fertility at the same margin. Investigation into mediators reveals that mothers of girls shift relatively less time from market to family work when an additional child is born. We speculate that this scarcity in parents’ time makes girls aware of the strains of life in large families, leading them to limit their own number of children in adulthood.     

宁夏回族自治区“少生快富”扶贫工程试点绩效评估

"少生快富"扶贫工程是国家奖励自愿少生农民的一项试点工程,是近年计生与扶贫领域联袂出台的一项重大改革措施。我国贫困地区已高度集中在西部地区,扶贫财政逐年增长,扶贫与返贫却已形成拉锯战局面,有效缓解区域人口压力,已经凸现对扶贫战略的根本意义,而"少生快富"也是计生利益导向机制与改变农民生育行为相结合的有力措施。并对宁夏试点项目管理及投入产出效益做了评估。     

Unemployment,Nonstandard Employment,and Fertility: Insights From Japan’s “Lost 20 Years”

In this study, we examine relationships of unemployment and nonstandard employment with fertility. We focus on Japan, a country characterized by a prolonged economic downturn, significant increases in both unemployment and nonstandard employment, a strong link between marriage and childbearing, and pronounced gender differences in economic roles and opportunities. Analyses of retrospective employment, marriage, and fertility data for the period 1990–2006 indicate that changing employment circumstances for men are associated with lower levels of marriage, while changes in women’s employment are associated with higher levels of marital fertility. The latter association outweighs the former, and results of counterfactual standardization analyses indicate that Japan’s total fertility rate would have been 10 % to 20 % lower than the observed rate after 1995 if aggregate- and individual-level employment conditions had remained unchanged from the 1980s. We discuss the implications of these results in light of ongoing policy efforts to promote family formation and research on temporal and regional variation in men’s and women’s roles within the family.     

Fertility history, health, and health changes in later life: a panel study of British women and men born 1923-49

We investigated associations between later-life health and fertility history for women and men, using the British Household Panel Survey. We modelled health and its rate of change jointly with sample retention over an 11-year period. For women, childlessness is associated with limitation of activity for health reasons and faster acquisition of the limitation. High parity (four or more children) is associated with poorer health for both women and men. For the parous, this association is also found when age at first birth is controlled. Early parenthood is associated with poorer health. For parents of two or more children, a birth interval of less than 18 months is associated with having a health limitation and an accelerated rate of acquiring it. We conclude that biosocial pathways link parenthood careers and the later-life health of both women and men, and that implications of closely spaced births for parents merit further attention.     

Fertility patterns of college graduates by field of study,US women born 1960–79

Building on recent European studies, we used the Survey of Income and Program Participation to provide the first analysis of fertility differences between groups of US college graduates by their undergraduate field of study. We used multilevel event-history models to investigate possible institutional and selection mechanisms linking field of study to delayed fertility and childlessness. The results are consistent with those found for Europe in showing an overall difference of 10 percentage points between levels of childlessness across fields, with the lowest levels occurring for women in health and education, intermediate levels for women in science and technology, and the highest levels for women in arts and social sciences. The mediating roles of the following field characteristics were assessed: motherhood employment penalties; percentage of men; family attitudes; and marriage patterns. Childlessness was higher among women in fields with a moderate representation of men, less traditional family attitudes, and late age at first marriage.     

A marriage trichotomy and its applications

This paper promotes research methods specific to men, the new focus of fertility and family planning studies (especially in sub-Saharan Africa). I propose a novel marriage categorization based on married men’s intentions to take another wife. The three marriage groups are currently monogamous men who intend to remain so, currently monogamous men who intend to become polygynous, and currently polygynous men. The first analysis demonstrates that typical marriage analyses may misclassify men who intend to become polygynous. Applications of the marriage trichotomy illustrate that men with varying marital intentions have differing desires regarding fertility and family planning.