Fertility and social mobility

This article contains an analysis of part of the results of an inquiry into social mobility undertaken jointly by the Nuffield Research Unit of the London School of Economics and the Population Investigation Committee, in collaboration with the Ministry of Labour, based on nation-wide sample material collected by the Social Survey in England and Wales in 1949. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Inter-Departmental Committee on Economic and Social Research for facilitating the collaboration with these government departments. In this paper, the relationship between fertility defined in terms of average family size of marriages of at least twenty years duration and social mobility is discussed. Two aspects of the latter phenomenon are discussed, namely, the position of sons on the social scale in relation to that of their fathers, and the change in the social status of a family in the period between the date of marriage and the date of the inquiry.

The conclusions reached stand in apparent contradiction to R. A. Fisher's ‘Theory of Infertility Selection’. It is shown that socially promoted families tend on the one hand to carry with them the family-building habits of the class of their origin, and, on the other, to acquire to some extent the fertility characteristics of the class into which they move.

The study of ‘personal’ social mobility throws some light on the question of the choice of the time-basis of socio-economic status allocation.     

Fertility and social mobility among teachers

Social mobility is defined as the teacher's present position in the professional hierarchy relative to his father's occupation, and fertility as the average number of children per married male teacher after 10 years of marriage. A sample of all male teachers in gran-earning schools in England and Wales was used for the study. The hypothesis examined is that put forward and tested in one form or another by numerous authors, that upward mobility is associated with relatively low fertility; and Berent's finding, that among persons of equal social status social origin is negatively correlated with size of family of procreation.

The study of teachers fails to reveal any relation for either of the hypotheses. This also holds when account is taken of the wife's social origin and size of family of origin of the teacher. The latter analysis suggests, however, that this was a factor in the teacher's own rise in the social scale. The question remaines why teachers do not conform to the national pattern shown to exist by Berent. It is argued that while teachers' socal origin still affects their choice of marriage partner, its influence is gradually obliterated by the overriding and homogenising influence pattern of the teacher's life. This suggests that care must be exercised in applying a general finding to selected populations and calls for more detailed study of other occupational groups to explain the forces at work in the process of social mobility.     

Pathways of change in social mobility: Industrialization,education and growing fluidity in Brazil

This paper explores the change in intergenerational class mobility over the last quarter-century in Brazil. Using repeated cross-sectional surveys between the early 1970s and the late 1990s and a counterfactual approach, we disentangle cohort from period interpretations of change, and examine the mechanisms driving change in fluidity among Brazilian men. We detect a substantial increase in social fluidity over time, which emerges from period transformation, rather than cohort replacement. This trend departs from industrialized nations, where growing fluidity has been found to be entirely driven by the replacement of older, more rigid cohorts by younger, more fluid ones, and to emerge from educational equalization and a “compositional effect”—educational expansion combined with a weaker intergenerational association among those with higher education. In contrast, in a context of rapid late industrialization, two mechanisms account for growing fluidity in Brazil: the decline in the “economic returns to schooling”, and the weakening of the direct influence of class origins on class destination, net of education. We discuss the implications of these patterns for the understanding of mobility dynamics in different national contexts.     

Fertility and development in Brazil

In the past, one of the concomitants of development has been a sustained reduction in fertility. As a result of this experience, demographers hypothesize that in a society in which fertility is lower in urban areas, among the upper socioeconomic status groups and the better-educated, fertility will decline to a moderate level as the country changes from a rural, agricultural socioeconomic structure, with low levels of living and education, to an urban, industrial structure, with rising levels of living and education.The data analyzed in this study indicate, however, that though substantial social and economic development (as measured by changes in industrial structure, per capita income, urbanization, and education) occurred in Brazil from at least 1920-40 to 1960, during which time fertility differentials of the kind indicated above existed, fertility has shown little or no tendency to decline. Between 1940 and 1960, in fact, the birth rate appears to have remained fairly constant around 43. With the death rate steadily dropping, the rate of natural increase and population growth (given a small net in-migration) has been accelerating. p ]From a theoretical point of view, these facts reinforce a growing realization, based on similar findings in some other developing countries, that the prevailing theoretical ideas concerning the relationship between development and fertility require modification, particularly in the direction of greater specificity. On the practical side, the question is raised whether Brazil's rate of economic development during the postwar period up to 1960 can be maintained, let alone increased, in the face of a population growth rate which will probably average 3.2-3.5 percent for the period 1960-70 and which, in the absence of a decline in fertility, is likely to accelerate further.     

Fertility and land availability in rural Brazil

Differences between the marital fertility of the agricultural frontier and that of the more settled rural areas of southern Brazil are analyzed in this paper. Fertility rates derived from 1970 census data appear to decrease as the degree of settlement increases, suggesting an experience parallel to the decline in U.S. rural fertility in the late nineteenth century, which Easterlin and others have attributed to increased scarcity of land for starting new farm households. Multivariate analysis of the Brazilian data shows parallels between the two situations but also reveals that the importance of literacy, child survival, and access to land is relatively greater than that of the availability of land for explaining fertility differentials in Brazil.     

Fertility and development: evidence from Brazil

Using microdata from the Brazilian demographic censuses of 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1991, aggregated into 518 consistently defined spatial units called microregions, we estimated fertility and mortality and constructed indicators of development and living conditions in the rural and urban areas of the microregions in each census. We then estimated cross-sectional and fixed-effects models to answer questions about the degree to which changes in these indicators are associated with changes in fertility and whether the relationship between fertility and development shifts through time. We found strong and consistent relationships between the decline in fertility and measurable changes in social and economic circumstances.     

Fertility, mortality, migration and family planning in the Yemen Arab Republic

Abstract Until the end of the seven years' civil war following the revolution of 1962, almost no reliable statistical information of any kind about the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) and its people was available. Since President al-Hamdi's takeover of 1974, the demand for more accurate statistics for developing planning has led to a number of studies which give us the first numerical insights into the dynamics of the Yemen's population. The National Population Census of 1975 is the most important of these studies since it showed two things very clearly. First, it indicated that the Yemen's population is large and concentrated in selected rural areas where there are real problems of crowding and shortages of good agricultural land. Secondly, the Census showed that the lack of domestic economic opportunities partially related to the high rural population densities, and the numerous opportunities in the oil-rich states of the Middle East, especially Sa'udi Arabia, had resulted in an out-migration of young males of prime ages of very large proportions. This article elaborates further on the dynamics of the population in Yemen and reports on the results of a small sample survey carried out in May 1976which provides further insights into the factors affecting fertility and mortality during this early stage of the Yemen's economic and social development.     

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 .     

College majors and social mobility

To further our understanding of social mobility in the United States, this study examines the role of major field of study during college, and the relationships between origin characteristics and education attainment. Data, collected in 2001, consisted of information on the college and labor market experiences of 4435 alumni from 30 colleges, as well as matched ACT data on alumni background and pre-college characteristics from three cohorts of college graduates up to 25 years after college. Results indicate that both placement on and movement along the social ladder are affected by college major, and the extent to which status is awarded based on merit relative to inherited economic resources is partially dependent upon major.     

Time preference, international migration, and social security

This paper analyzes both the formation of long-run migration incentives and the consequences of a regime change from “autarky” to “free migration” in an overlapping-generations framework with two countries. Under autarky the countries may differ with respect to their aggregate savings rate or with respect to their pension-wage ratio. It is shown that an individual prefers to live in a country where the capital-labor ratio is close to the Golden Rule level and where his characteristics are relatively scarce. Both the migration incentives and the consequences of free migration are determined by these two effects. Received: 2 March 1998/Accepted: 10 February 1999     

Fertility, child care outside the home, and pay-as-you-go social security

We examine the long-run effects of the pay-as-you-go (PAYG) social security scheme on fertility and welfare of individuals in an overlapping generations model, assuming that child-care services are available in the market. We show that the impact of a tax increase on fertility depends on the relative magnitudes of the standard intergenerational redistribution effect through the social security system, the (implicit) subsidy effect through tax-exemption of child rearing at home, and the price effect through changes in the relative price of market child care, and that if parental child-rearing time is inelastic, a tax cut could bring about a Pareto-improving allocation.

Rural-urban migration and the social mobility of individuals in the Republic of Korea: an analysis of life history data

The paper explores the impact of rural-to-urban migration on the social mobility of individuals, comparing rural-to-urban migrants with rural and urban natives. Using life history data from the 1983 Korean National Migration Survey, the authors examined the pattern of migrant adjustment by estimating the 1st difference form of the autoregressive equation. They found a disruptive effect of rural-to-urban migration that disappears gradually after migration. This study provides strong evidence that most rural-to-urban migrants successfully adapt to urban life through upward occupational mobility relative to both rural and urban natives. This finding sharply contrasts with previous studies on the urban informal sector, which emphasize selective rural-to-urban migration or the inability of migrating individuals to adapt to city life. Moreover, this study showed that a principle cause of the rapid expansion of Seoul is that migrants are more likely to be upwardly mobile when they are destined for Seoul rather than other cities.     

Another look at fertility and social mobility

This is a response to Basil Zimmer's contention that the classical hypothesis connecting social mobility with fertility was rejected in the Princeton Fertility Study because of a faulty mode of analysis. Arguing from the findings of a strong association in a sample of Aberdeen women, Zimmer asserts that if social origin and destination were taken into account, the same relationship would have emerged in the U.S. data. The evidence from the Princeton Study is reviewed and new evidence presented which confirms the original findings of no relationship.     

Make way for the wealthy? Autonomous vehicles,markets in mobility,and social justice

ABSTRACT

The development of a ‘mobility as a service’ model for accessing urban transport via autonomous vehicles may be expected to have far-reaching implications for the economics of road transport. In particular, it would offer a new opportunity to price access to the roads in accordance with the principles of the free market. Once people are paying for mobility on the roads on a ‘per trip’ basis, it will be possible to offer different levels of access – and service – at different prices. According to hegemonic ideas in the transport planning and economics literature the introduction of such a ‘market in mobility’ would be an economically efficient way of allocating access to the scarce good of space on the roads. In this paper we draw attention to a number of ethical and political challenges to the appropriateness of the use of such a pricing mechanism in the context of urban mobility.     

Factors affecting fertility of natives and migrants in urban Brazil

Abstract Modernization is expected to change the patterns of population growth of developing countries. The primary reason explaining the fast rate of population growth of these nations has been established as that of the reductions of mortality! which marks the first stage of demographic transition. The second stage in this process is the reduction in fertility which counterbalances lowered mortality and therefore reduces the rate of population growth. This latter phase has been achieved in modern industrial societies.     

生育理性和生育决策与我国低生育水平稳定机制的转变

自改革开放以来 ,我国人口生育率水平出现了迅速的转变 ,特别是 1 992年我国确立了市场经济为目标的经济改革以来 ,生育率水平更是进一步降低到更替水平以下。如果说 ,生育率的迅速转变是在国家计划生育政策干预下启动的 ,那么 ,在 1 990年代生育率的下降应该主要是社会和经济发展的结果。以市场经济为导向的经济改革和经济的迅速发展 ,已经为稳定我国城市地区人口低生育率水平提供了必要的经济条件 ,同时 ,制度、技术和文化等因素的变革已经为我国个人生育决策理性化创造了条件 ,低生育水平的稳定机制已经开始从政策控制为主转向群众自我控制为主的转变     

Fertility and replacement: Some alternative stochastic models and results for Brazil

The observed joint distribution of births and child deaths for a cohort of women at a given point in time depends on the number of children that would have been born had the family experienced no deaths, the number of child deaths experienced, and the proportion of these deaths that are replaced by a subsequent birth. In this paper we estimate the parameters of the assumed distributions of these three events using a minimum distance estimation model and data from the 1970 Brazilian census. The parameter estimates are shown to be similar to those obtained previously using a maximum likelihood estimation model. When the data are subdivided according to women's years of schooling, estimates of probability of a child death and mean and variance of children born if no deaths decrease while estimates of probability of replacement of a dead child increase as years of schooling increase.     

Fertility decision making,unintended births,and the social drift hypothesis: A longitudinal study

To explore relationships between fertility intentions and subsequent childbearing, data were collected from 334 mothers in a metropolitan area in 1963 and again in 1971, allowing for a time interval of eight years for testing a series of hypotheses on fertility control. The results suggested that social psychological obstacles to decision making should be taken into account as potential qualifiers of the more rational models of fertility behavior currently prevalent in the literature. The alienation variable of meaninglessness was examined in conjunction with education, age at marriage, marital duration, and previous parity. The analyses indicated that pregnancies for many women are experienced as occurrences, happenings, or unintended events within a social psychological context of social drift.Research support pursuant to contract NIH-71-2028 with the Center for Population Research, NICHD, is gratefully acknowledged, as is the assistance of David W. Chilson in the processing of the data. Request reprints from either author, Sociology Department, Bowling Green University, Bowling Green, Ohio 43403.