Exploring the influence of precipitation on fertility timing in rural Mexico

The influence of environmental conditions on fertility decision-making is becoming increasingly important in the context of contemporary climate change. Deforestation, land availability, and environmental quality may shape decisions regarding family size, particularly in regions with high levels of natural resource dependence. This research examines the relationship between fertility timing and precipitation in rural Mexico by linking household event-history data to municipal-level precipitation measures. Even after controlling for other factors that impact fertility, in historically dry areas, households are more likely to have a child following above average precipitation, using both 1-year and 2-year prior precipitation measures. Conversely, the relationship between precipitation and fertility timing in humid areas of rural Mexico is not statistically significant. Overall, the findings reveal that the fertility-environment connection is highly context-specific and differs across climate zones in Mexico, but that fertility timing is associated with recent rainfall patterns for households in dry areas of rural Mexico.     

The role of intergenerational transfers,land, and education in fertility transition in rural Kenya: the case of Nyeri district

This qualitative study reveals how population pressures, land availability, inheritance norms, and educational opportunities intertwine to influence fertility decline in rural Kenya. Focus group discussions with men and women whose childbearing occurred both before and after the onset of rapid, unexpected fertility transition in Nyeri, Kenya allowed individuals who actually participated in, or witnessed, the fertility transition to “voice” their perceptions as to the mechanisms underlying the transition. Findings suggest that, since land inheritance is a cultural norm, land scarcity and diminishing farm size often influence fertility decision-making and behavior via preferences for fewer children. Further, education does not appear to be the driving cause of fertility behavior change, but rather is adopted as a substitute for land inheritance when land resources are scarce. These findings have implications for our understanding of fertility behavior as well as for improving predictions of fertility transition in other rural sub-Saharan African contexts.     

中国农村居民家庭的生育决策模型与实证分析

根据"五普"和"六普"资料,人口总和生育率显著低于世代更替水平,这表明中国人口进入了低生育水平发展阶段。关于这一问题的合理解释是除了计划生育政策影响外,农村家庭生育决策的变化可能是内生的重要影响因素。基于生育决策模型及实证分析,得出这样的结论:在土地量保持不变的条件下,农村居民家庭的生育决策主要取决于收入水平和抚养子女的成本。农村居民家庭可能会依据"量质权衡"减少生育子女,这可能是导致中国人口生育水平下降的根本原因。     

Land cover change and fertility in West-Central Africa: rural livelihoods and the vicious circle model

The vicious circle argument, rooted in a neo-Malthusian tradition, states that resource scarcity increases the demand for child labor and leads to higher fertility. The rural livelihood framework, on the other hand, contends that households employ multiple strategies, only one of which involves adjusting their fertility levels as a response to environmental pressures. This study provides a unique test of both theories by examining the relationship between land cover change and fertility across hundreds of rural communities in four West-Central African countries. The findings reveal a complex relationship between natural capital and fertility. In communities where natural capital was initially low, a further decline in that capital is associated with both higher fertility preferences and levels. However, we find that fertility preferences and behavior are often discordant, with notable within-community differences in response to decline in natural capital across levels of household wealth.     

Rural-urban fertility differentials in Western Nigeria

Abstract The paper attempts to glean some information on differential fertility from data obtained in a survey of selected urban and rural communities in Western Nigeria. The results show that the attitudes of rural women are far more favourable to high fertility than those of urban women, though for both groups the modal number of children preferred is five or six. The analysis also yields a total fertility of nearly six and an average family size of about five for both groups. No conclusive evidence of rural-urban fertility differentials has, however, been found. All that can be said on the basis of the available data is that the level of fertility in Western Nigeria is currently very high and that urban fertility is probably as high as rural fertility, though the probability of much larger errors in the rural than in the urban data may imply somewhat higher rural fertility.     

中国人口迁移与生育率关系研究

本文利用2000年人口普查数据,考察了中国人口迁移与生育率的关系。通过比较农村本地人口、城市本地人口和流动迁移人口三个人口群体在生育率上的差异,并进行多元统计分析,结果表明,流动迁移对生育率有着非常显著影响,城市外来人口的生育率不仅显著低于农村本地人口,而且也低于城市本地人口;远期流迁人口的生育率要低于近期流迁人口的生育率。中国人口迁移与生育率的关系出现了与已有的迁移生育率理论的不一致。1990年代中国的迁移生育率发生了转变。     

Out-migration and land-use change in agricultural frontiers: insights from Altamira settlement project

One of Daniel Hogan??s lasting impacts on international demography community comes through his advocacy for studying bidirectional relationships between environment and demography, particularly migration. We build on his holistic approach to mobility and examine dynamic changes in land use and migration among small farm families in Altamira, Pará, Brazil. We find that prior area in either pasture or perennials promotes out-migration of adult children, but that out-migration is not directly associated with land-use change. In contrast to early formulations of household life cycle models that argued that aging parents would decrease productive land use as children left the farm, we find no effect of out-migration of adult children on land-use change. Instead, remittances facilitate increases in area in perennials, a slower to pay off investment that requires scarce capital, but in pasture. While remittances are rare, they appear to permit sound investments in the rural milieu and thus to slow rural exodus and the potential consolidation of land into large holdings. We would do well to promote the conditions that allow them to be sent and to be used productively to keep families on the land to avoid the specter of extensive deforestation for pasture followed by land consolidation.     

Residence background,socioeconomic status,and fertility

Previous research has demonstrated that socioeconomic differentials in fertility are heavily influenced by couples with rural background. These studies show an inverse relationship between fertility and socioeconomic status for couples of rural background, but no relationship for urbanorigin couples. The effect of urban background on rural fertility differentials has not been examined. This study investigates the potential effect of urban-origin couples on socioeconomic differences in fertility in rural areas. Data from the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity are analyzed to show that rural socioeconomic fertility differences are not influenced by the presence of persons of urban background.     

Land use as a mediating factor of fertility in the Amazon

Despite implications for both humans and the environment, a scant body of research examines fertility in forest frontiers. This study examines the fertility–environment association using empirical data from Ecuadorian Amazon between 1980 and 1999. Fertility dramatically declined during this period, and our empirical models suggest that households’ relationship to land partially explains this decline. Controlling for known fertility determinants such as age and education, women in households lacking land titles experienced a 27 % higher birth rate than did women in households with land titles. This suggests insecure land tenure was associated with higher fertility. Furthermore, each additional hectare of new pasture was associated with a 16 % higher birth rate, suggesting the potential role of a more stable and lucrative income source in supporting additional births. Findings from this research can help inform strategic policies to address sustainable development in frontier environments.     

Interregional differences in fertility in Brazil, 1950–1970

Trends and interregional differences in the birth rate in Brazil between 1950 and 1970 are examined. Estimates are based on data from the 1950 and 1970 censuses. Regional differences in birth measures (crude and general rates) were found to widen between 1950 and 1970 despite a decline in fertility at the national level and a narrowing of regional differences in important socioeconomicvariables like income and urbanization, The substantial interregional migration flows which occurred in Brazil between 1950 and 1970 are examined for their possible impact on differentials. The effects are mixed, but the conclusion is that migration contributed to widening differences.     

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.     

Rural-Urban Migration and Reproductive Behavior in Guatemala

Guatemala has the highest fertility of any country in Latin America, and it is also the least urbanized. Projected rural-urban migration will shift more of Guatemala's population from rural areas into towns and cities. This article uses retrospective life-history data collected in migrant origin and destination areas in Guatemala to compare the fertility of rural-urban migrant women to that of rural and urban nonmigrants. Results from discrete-time hazard regression models of union formation, first birth, and third and higher parity births indicate that delayed marriage while still in rural areas, and the rapid adoption of urban fertility practices after migration, result in intermediate migrant fertility that is closer to that of urban natives than rural nonmigrants. If current patterns are any guide to the future, the redistribution of population from high fertility rural areas to towns and cities in Guatemala will accelerate the decline in aggregate fertility beyond what would have resulted from declines in rural and urban fertility alone.     

Differential fertility in peasant communities: A study of Six Iranian Villages

Summary This paper attempts to study the relation between socio-economic status and fertility in a sample of six villages in Iran. An index of socio-economic status was constructed. The data reveal positive association between socio-economic status and fertility behaviour of rural couples. When duration of marriage, age of woman at marriage and contraceptive use were introduced into the socio-economic status-fertility relationships, they failed to alter the original findings. Because socio-economic status is related to a number of variables which directly or indirectly influence fertility, additional variables such as miscarriage, stillbirth and lactation must be incorporated into rural surveys on fertility differentials.     

A Comparative Analysis of the Fertility of the Urban and Rural in China Since 2000

The different in the fertility of the rural and urban and future changing trend are very important questions to understand China’s population problem. This paper calculates the fertility of the urban and the rural since 2000 based on the statistical data and compares the fertility rate in the urban and the rural population since 2000. The finding shows that the TFR in the rural is less than 1.8 while the TFR in the urban is less than 1.3 and the difference is narrowing year by year. The fertility difference is mainly caused by the second child, generally speaking the second child fertility tend to increasing slightly while the first child fertility shows dramatic fluctuations because of the Chinese folk culture, the fertility fluctuation in the rural is much dramatic than that in the urban. The mean age at childbearing (MAC) has been delaying in both the rural and the urban areas in the decade.     

The influence of human fertility on the economic conditions of the rural population in poland

Summary In 1970, Polish women in agricultural households reported larger numbers of children born alive than women in other occupations. When controlling for the influence of age at marriage and duration of marriage, the average number of children born per women among the farming population increased directly with the amount of privately owned agricultural land. Consistently, women whose principal source of livelihood was derived from non-agricultural sources even though they resided in villages, showed lower fertility than those in the agricultural sector, but significantly higher fertility than city women. This study is based on the five per cent sample of ever-married women between 15 and 70 years of age interviewed about their past reproductive histories in Poland during the 1970 Census of Population.The conclusions identify the high level of human fertility in rural populations as the main determinant of economic status among Polish peasants whose sources of support derive primarily from farming. Additional evidence supporting the hypothesis of dependence of the agricultural economy on the force of human reproduction is based on data for Slovakia and the Czech regions.     

2000年以来中国城乡生育水平的比较分析

我国城乡生育水平、发展趋势及差异程度的对比研究对于人口发展问题意义重大。首先通过运算,得出了城乡总和生育率指标数值,呈现出2000年以来十年间城乡生育状况,然后对这些数据进行了细致的比较与分析。研究结果表明：尽管十年中生育水平呈现波动状态,但农村总和生育率一直都低于1．8,城镇则低于1．3,差异近几年有逐步缩小的趋势;城乡生育水平差异主要来自二孩生育率的差异,二孩生育率近十年来有微弱上升趋势;一孩生育率受民俗等因素影响较大,城镇波动大于农村;平均生育年龄推迟现象在城镇、农村一直都在缓慢持续。     

Women’s land ownership and participation in decision-making about reproductive health in Malawi

Given the centrality of land to rural livelihoods and the high rates of fertility in Africa, there is a need for more research that explores the intersection between gendered patterns of land ownership and reproductive health outcomes. Drawing on a household bargaining framework, I hypothesize that women’s land ownership should be associated with increases in women’s decision-making in multiple domains in the household including financial decision-making (the focus of bargaining literature), but also decision-making about reproductive health. Using the 2010 Malawi Demographic Health Survey (DHS), I find women’s ownership of land (sole or joint) is associated with increases in women’s participation in financial decision-making in the household and women’s sole ownership of land is associated with increases in women’s participation in reproductive health decision-making. However, women’s joint ownership of land with spouses is negatively associated with participation in reproductive health decision-making, perhaps because of backlash or intra-household conflict.     

西北农村妇女文化素质对生育水平及生育观念的影响分析——对甘肃中部地区520名农村妇女的调查

本文利用对甘肃中部地区10个贫困县的调查资料,采用SPSS统计方法,就贫困妇女文化程度与生育水平和生育观念的关系进行了实证分析。分析结果表明,妇女文化素质对初婚年龄、初育年龄和活产子女数都有不同程度的影响,且呈现出负相关关系;较高文化素质的妇女在生育目的方面传宗接代和养儿防老观念已经淡薄。生育子女性别仍具有较强的男孩偏好特征,理想子女数少生观念明显,尤其对于子女教育期望有较强的性别平等意识。     

Fertility decline in Scotland, England and Wales, and Ireland: comparisons from the 1911 census of fertility

Data on family size by year of marriage, age at marriage, and duration of marriage, from the 1911 Fertility Census, are compared between Scotland, England and Wales, Irish county boroughs, and the rest of Ireland. While means show significant inter-country differences, from the 1880s marked similarities are found across all the countries in the pattern of fertility decline, strongly suggesting significant fertility limitation in rural Ireland well before 1911. Noting the implications for the use of rural Ireland as a natural fertility population, the data are instead compared with the Coale-Trussell and Hinde-Woods schedules. The former provides more plausible results, which imply strong period rather than cohort effects in the fertility decline. Except in rural Ireland, little evidence is found for significant fertility limitation early in marriage among younger marrying couples, but many older marrying couples appear to have stopped childbearing at very low parities from an early date.     

Fertility change in rural China, 1949–1982

In the present study, the technique of life table analysis is used to examine fertility change by birth order in rural China, particularly in the rural portion of Anhui province. The study mainly focuses on the relationship between fertility change by birth order and planned socioeconomic changes. Change in fertility by birth order in the last few decades in rural China and Anhui is used as an indicator of the effects of planned socioeconomic changes on the process of family building. Some light is shed on the extent to which fertility changes affected women at different stages of their reproductive career. The data are from the 1/1000 Fertility Survey of China, conducted by the Family Planning Commission in 1982.