Statistical modeling of selected aspects of the childbearing process with application to World Fertility Survey countries

"A mathematical model for estimation of certain aspects of the childbearing process, which requires only data on age-specific fertility rates, is developed. Synthetic maternal childbearing indices, namely, mean ages at first and last birth, length of reproductive life span, inter-birth spacing, and proportion of childless women, in addition to the well-known mean age at childbearing, for the WFS [World Fertility Surveys conducted in developing] countries are obtained using the proposed model. The indices are free from age truncation effects, and, under certain assumptions, provide information about a cohort's completed fertility before the women stop reproducing. The effects of women's residence and education on fertility are also examined." (SUMMARY IN FRE)     

山东省生育力抽样调查分析报告

经过30多年的努力,我省人口数量过快增长的势头已经得到有效控制,实现了人口再生产类型的历史性转变.但是由于人口问题具有特定的发展规律,加之人口发展的巨大惯性作用,未来十几年,我省的人口总量仍会保持持续增长的态势,生育率反弹的主客观条件依然存在.为正确分析新形势下人口和计划生育工作面临的新问题,必须对我省人口与计划生育工作的过去和现状进行科学的评价,对妇女生育水平和生育意愿进行准确的评估,并通过总结工作经验和规律,有针对性地指导基层工作,为省委、省政府制定"十一五"及中长期国民经济和社会发展规划奠定基础,最终实现我省人口与社会经济、自然资源和生态环境的协调发展.经省人口计生委党组研究决定,由我处牵头在全省范围内组织开展一次育龄妇女生育力抽样调查.调查时点为2004年7月1日,调查时间为7月20日至8月10日.现将调查情况报告如下:     

The End of the Fertility Transition in the Developed World

By the late 1990s the average period total fertility rate in the developed world had declined to 1.6, a level substantially lower than projected in the 1970s and 1980s. This article examines recent trends and patterns in fertility in the developed world with particular emphasis on the effects and implications of changes in the timing of childbearing. The main objective is to demonstrate that while fertility in these countries is indeed low, women's childbearing levels are not as low as period measures such as the total fertility rate suggest. To obtain a full understanding of the various dimensions of fertility change. several indicators are examined, including period and cohort fertility by birth order and childbearing preferences. An analysis of these indicators demonstrates that period fertility measures in many developed countries are temporarily depressed by a rise in the mean age at childbearing. The distortion of the TFR is as great as 0.4 births per woman in Italy and Spain. These effects have been present in many developed countries since the 1970s and could continue for years into the future. But tempo effects are temporary, and once the postponement of childbearing ends—as it eventually must—the corresponding fertility‐depressing effect stops, thus putting upward pressure on period fertility. Countries with very low fertility and substantial tempo effects may well experience rises in fertility in the near future if the timing of childbearing stabilizes. Even if this happens, however, it seems unlikely that fertility will rebound to the replacement level.     

甘肃省居民生育意愿与生育目的的调查研究

文章利用2007年调查数据,分析研究了甘肃省居民的生育意愿和生育目的。调查发现．随着经济的发展和社会的进步,甘肃省居民的意愿生育数量不断减少,已经略低于更替生育水平,男孩偏好的意愿生育性别倾向仍然广泛存在,期望生育一儿一女是大部分甘肃居民最为普遍的愿望,意愿妇女初育年龄不断推迟．生育目的呈现出多元化趋势,但养老送终、传宗接代仍是目前最重要的生育目的。     

Fertility preferences and subsequent childbearing in Africa and Asia: A synthesis of evidence from longitudinal studies in 28 populations

Survey data on fertility preferences have played a central but controversial role in fertility research and advocacy for family planning. We summarize evidence from longitudinal studies in 28 Asian and African populations on the relationship between preferences and subsequent childbearing. While we found no consistent association between women's desire to delay childbearing and subsequent fertility, the baseline desire of women to stop childbearing was a powerful predictor of subsequent fertility in all populations and increased in strength as overall contraceptive use in the study populations rose. Partners’ desire also exercised some influence but was of modest importance in most populations. However, the correspondence between desire to stop and behaviour was found to be far from perfect. Weak implementation of preferences by contraception is likely to be the major cause of this preference–behaviour discrepancy. Uncertainty and instability in preferences may also contribute to the discrepancy, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.     

New Cohort Fertility Forecasts for the Developed World: Rises,Falls, and Reversals

With period fertility having risen in many low‐fertility countries, an important emerging question is whether cohort fertility trends are also reversing. We produce new estimates of cohort fertility for 37 developed countries using a new, simple method that avoids the underestimation typical of previous approaches. Consistent with the idea that timing changes were largely responsible for the last decades' low period fertility, we find that family size has remained considerably higher than the period rates of 1.5 in many “low‐fertility” countries, averaging about 1.8 children. Our forecasts suggest that the long‐term decline in cohort fertility is flattening or reversing in many world regions previously characterized by low fertility. We document the marked increase of cohort fertility in the English‐speaking world and in Scandinavia; signs of an upward reversal in many low‐fertility countries, including Japan and Germany; and continued declines in countries such as Taiwan and Portugal. We include in our forecasts estimates of statistical uncertainty and the possible effects of the recent economic recession.     

The organization of the one percent National Sample Survey of Fertility and its findings]

In September of 1982, a national sample survey of fertility was conducted. A total of 70,000 professional personnel in family planning and manpower in related fields were engaged in this survey. They conducted a comprehensive survey at 815 sample points in 28 different provinces, cities, and autonomous regions all over the country. Their findings can be summarized as follows: (1) A more advanced understanding of the rules of China's population reproduction, (2) supplemental information on births and marital status which was not collected fully in the national census, (3) scientific analysis of the results in family planning during the past 10 or more years, and indication of a correct way for scientific management in family planning work from now on, and (4) a large number of professsional cadres were trained and developed in this sample survey to function effectively in the field of family planning in the future.     

The socioeconomic consequences of young women's childbearing: Reconciling disparate evidence

Recent studies have begun to examine rigorously the links between early childbearing and subsequent socioeconomic status. Prominent in this literature has been a set of analyses that have used sibling fixed effects models to control for omitted variables bias. These studies report that the siblings difference procedure leads to smaller estimates of the effects of teen fertility than does standard regression analysis. While it is well known that the siblings fixed effects procedure makes strong assumptions regarding the type of omitted variables and is not necessarily robust to alternative assumptions, the assumptions of the procedure have not been explicitly examined. This paper uses 1979–1992 data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to compare estimates of the income and education consequences of teenage and young adult fertility from standard regression and siblings fixed effects models with estimates from more general, alternative siblings models. Received: 19 January 1998/Accepted: 6 April 1999     

生育政策调整对生育意愿影响研究——基于2015年追踪调查数据的发现

文章利用2015年生育意愿追踪调查数据,分析"单独两孩"政策出台后我国居民的生育意愿变化情况,单独一孩家庭打算生育二孩的比例为39.5%,普通一孩家庭为32.2%,较以前有所下降.前续调查对于是否生育二孩表示"说不好"的人群中,追踪调查显示大约60%倾向于不打算生育,政策目标人群由"打算生"到"不打算生"是生育意愿转变的主要趋势,经济压力大是影响生育二孩的首要原因,政策敏感人群所占比重在地区间存在差异,政策落地对优生筛查、孕产服务、幼教等方面提出更高要求,需要做好各项公共政策衔接,确保实施效果.     

The International Multidimensional Fertility Index: The European Case

We propose an index to measure the degree of ability or desire of the population in a given country to have children, via an analysis of certain factors that may have a positive or negative influence on the fertility rate of that country. Using data for the twenty-eight countries of the European Union, and Principal Components Analysis, we construct the International Multidimensional Fertility Index as a combination of four dimensions: (1) Economy and family, (2) Attitudes and habits, (3) Work–Life Balance, and (4) Policy, along with nineteen distinct variables. We find that Denmark, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg are among the countries with the highest value of the index, and they also have high fertility rates within the EU. At the other end of the spectrum, Latvia, Cyprus, and Greece, are ranked in the last positions according to our index, countries that also present low values in their fertility rates. We also find a positive correlation between the value of our index and country fertility rates, an indication that our index may be capturing country differences in the conditions for bearing children, with higher values of the index indicating better conditions for childbirth and childrearing. To the extent that international data becomes available, our methodology will allow for the construction of international rankings, helpful in identifying cross-country differences in the conditions for fertility.     

Fertility Behaviour and Wealth Situation in Nigeria: Evidence from 2013 Demographic and Health Survey

With the growing interest in evaluation of quality of life, emerging number of methods are presented. Each contribution varies depending on the matter of interest, and all of them address the issue of subjective weighting factors. The objective of this paper is to explore possibilities to enhance Better Life ranking methodology, available from the Better Life initiative website, using I-distance method. The result was twofold: firstly, we pointed out potential shortcomings of subjectively chosen weights of Better Life ranking methodology by employing our I-distance approach. Secondly, we provided detailed information on how each Better Life indicator contributes to the final position and emphasize the essential indicators in the process of ranking. We have collected the latest available data for 2014, including all 24 indicators of the Better Life composite index. After that we have compared the two ways of rankings, i.e. the I-distance ranking and the Better Life ranking, emphasizing the improvement offered by the I-distance methodology. Further, through iterative exclusion of indicators based on the level of their significance, we have reached the highest quality of the model. That model includes the following six indicators: personal earnings, water quality, life satisfaction, household net adjusted disposable income, employment rate, rooms per person. Hereby, we have compared and presented ranking changes at each iteration for the top 10 countries, which offer a level of consistency in their rank. In addition, one of the objectives is to help policymakers focus on the key indicators in order to improve the ranking of the country, showing governments and administrations which indicators are the most important to invest into. Moreover, our approach could be the foundation for impartial framework of the quality of life’s assessment, independent of subjectively formed weighting factors.     

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.     

Challenges in Measuring and Studying Multipartnered Fertility in American Survey Data

Multipartnered fertility (“MPF”) has become a major topic of interest in the United States due to potential negative linkages with parental, child, and family wellbeing. A first step in studying any newly emerging (or newly identified) social phenomenon is to properly define the issue and identify its prevalence. However, this is problematic in the case of MPF because most existing sources of data were not originally designed to study MPF. We examine the major data sources used to produce estimates of MPF in the United States, discussing the methodological issues that produce conflicting prevalence estimates and providing guidelines for producing comparable estimates. We also discuss important considerations for research seeking to link MPF and outcomes. Our recommendations will help researchers situate their findings in the broader literature and spur future research.     

Fertility in Larsmo: The Effect of Laestadianism

Larsmo is a small municipality on the West coast of Finland with an exceptional fertility development due to the presence of a revivalist movement, Laestadianism, which is opposed to contraception. About 40 per cent of the population are Laestadians. Laestadians do not cohabit outside formal marriage, and the rule of pre-marital sexual abstinence seems to be observed. Within marriage, fertility seems to be unrestricted with respect to the first child, but an increasing proportion of Laestadians have begun to practise family planning, lengthen birth intervals, and restrict their families to three or four children. There remains, however, an inner group which appears to procreate without restriction. Since mortality is very low, a total fertility of six births per woman corresponds to a net reproduction of about 2.9, which is among the highest documented after 1970.Fertility in Larsmo has traditionally been high, and we expected that the presence of pro-natalist Laestadians would tend to increase the fertility of non-Laestadians as well. However, the demographic behaviour of non-Laestadians in most respects resembles that of the Finnish population as a whole, although extra-marital cohabitation seems to be rarer, since almost all the children born are legitimate.     

The changing character of stepfamilies: implications of cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing

Divorce, nonmarital childbearing, and cohabitation are reshaping family experience in the United States. Because of these changes, our traditional definitions of families decreasingly capture the social units of interest. We have noted how a significant proportion of officially defined single-parent families actually are two-parent unmarried families. The present paper expands on this perspective with respect to stepfamilies. We must broaden our definition of stepfamilies to include cohabitations involving a child of only one partner, and must recognize the large role of nonmarital childbearing in the creation of stepfamilies. We find that cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing have been important aspects of stepfamily experience for at least two decades, and that this is increasingly so. To define stepfamilies only in terms of marriage clearly underestimates both the level and the trend in stepfamily experience: when cohabitation is taken into account, about two-fifths of all women and 30% of all children are likely to spend some time in a stepfamily.