Antecedents to contraceptive innovation: Evidence from rural Northern Thailand

A number of different causal mechanisms have been proposed to explain the onset of fertility declines in populations with previously uncontrolled fertility, but they have never been adequately tested. The present study identifies and tests five antecedents to family limitation practices in a sample of 755 currently married couples resident in rural Northern Thailand. The loglinear multiple regression models estimated indicate that couples in more developed districts, more modern couples, couples in which wives have more equal roles, couples believing that intergenerational wealth transfers favor children rather than their parents, and more wealthy couples, were all significantly more likely to be early adopters of contraception. Local development levels appeared to have the greatest net effects on the timing of adoption of fertility control. In addition, couples in areas where contraceptive services were more readily available were also significantly more likely to be contraceptive innovators, net of these five variables.     

A Case for “Reverse One-Child” Policies in Japan and South Korea? Examining the Link Between Education Costs and Lowest-Low Fertility

Household spending on children’s pre-tertiary education is exceptionally high in Japan and South Korea, and has been cited as a cause of low fertility. Previous research attributes this high spending to a cultural emphasis on education in East Asian countries. In this paper, we argue that institutional factors, namely higher education and labor market systems, play an important role in reinforcing the pressure on parents to invest in their children’s education. We review evidence showing that graduating from a prestigious university has very high economic and social returns in Japan and South Korea, and examine the implications for fertility within the framework of quantity–quality models. Finally, we put forward ‘reverse one-child’ policies that directly address the unintended consequences of these institutional factors on fertility. These policies have the additional virtues of having very low fiscal requirements and reducing social inequality.     

Recent changes in Negro fertility

Crude birth rates for the Negro population of the United States indicate that fertility declined while Negroes remained in the South and them climbed in the last twenty-five years as Negroes became urbanized. Cohort rates show more precisely the effects of the Depression upon childbearing as well as the magnitude and persistence of the post-Depression rise in fertility. More Negro women now become mothers, average family size has increased, and the proportion of women bearing six, seven, or eight children has risen. Negro fertility has risen despite the urbanization of Negroes and improvements in their socio-economic characteristics. Negro fertility rates present the paradox of falling when demographic transition theory would predict the maintenance of high rates and then rising when a decline would be expected. Urbanization does not appear to have reduced Negro fertility. Traditionally, urban living has dampened childbearing in two ways—first, health conditions in cities were inferior to those of rural areas, and thus urbanization affected fecundity adversely; second, city residents are more likely to know about and adopt birth control than rural residents. Negroes migrated to cities at the very time when diseases were being controlled and when public health and welfare facilities were being expanded to serve all residents. This has contributed to higher Negro fertility rates. If fertility rates are to fall because of family planning, not only must birth control be available but there must be a desire to limit family size. Such a desire may be linked to opportunities for social mobility. Negroes have not been assimilated into urban society as previous in-migrant groups were, and opportunities for mobility have been restricted. For these reasons Negroes may be slow to adopt stable monogamous families and the intentional control of fertility.     

Children as by-products, investment goods and consumer goods: A Review of some micro-economic models of fertility

Summary This paper is a review of a number of applications of traditional micro-economics to the analysis of fertility. In this paper four general models of family size are developed and utilized for classifying previous work on the micro-economic analysis of fertility. The general models describe four family decision-making situations. The outcome of these decisions determines fertility either directly or indirectly. In the first model, parents are forced to choose between sexual activity and a higher standard of living. Children are the by-products of the amount of sexual activity chosen. In the second model, children are an investment good and family size is determined by the choice between current and future consumption. The third and fourth models depict situations in which children are considered to be desirable in themselves, that is, they are consumption goods.     

The impact of child care on fertility in urban Thailand

Women’s labor force participation in Thailand, particularly in the modem sector, recently has increased in conjunction with rapid declines in fertility. This paper examines whether a relationship exists between child care considerations and fertility decision making among Bangkok women. Although the two-child family has become the norm in recent years, and although most respondents said that ideally they would like to have two children, a high proportion of women surveyed said they planned to only have one child. Women’s work status and type of employment is found to strongly affect the likelihood of having a second birth: those who work at jobs that not only are low-paying but are located in a formal setting are least likely to have a second child. The type of child care for the first child also has an impact: those whose first child is in a less preferred situation are less likely to have a second. Variables measuring the need for and type of child care are found to have greater consequences for fertility than do usual measures of socioeconomic status.     

The Persistence of High Fertility in the American South on the Eve of the Baby Boom

Pockets of high fertility persisted in some areas of the American South through the Great Depression. Most other areas of the country adopted modem fertility patterns considerably earlier in the century; these “laggard” areas are clear exceptions to the national demographic revolution in family building. In this paper we attempt to identify the factors that account for the persistently high fertility in some southern regions. We use county-level data for 1940 to assess the utility of three theoretical models of fertility: structural, diffusion-innovation, and health. Differences by race are also considered, in view of the distinctly different histories of whites and African-Americans in the south. Our findings suggest that unicausal explanations for the persistence of high fertility are too simplistic; all three theoretical perspectives receive empirical support. Considerable similarity is observed in the findings for blacks and for whites. Yet important differences also emerge, especially the more powerful effects of structural variables on white fertility. We conclude that the evidence indicates the need for “diversity” in the study of demographic behavior. Not only should we examine a variety of causal mechanisms for demographic phenomena; we also should consider the varying utility of those mechanisms across different social groups.     

Children as insurance

This paper presents a dynamic model of fertility decisions in which children serve as an incomplete insurance good. The model incorporates uncertainty about future income and the survival of children as well as a discrete representation of the number of children. It contributes to the understanding of the negative relation between fertility and education, shows why parents may demand children even if the return is negative, and explains why fertility might rise with increasing income when income is low and decrease when income is high. Furthermore, the model can account for the decline in fertility when the risk of infant and child mortality decreases. Finally, the implications for empirical tests of the demand for children are also examined. Received: 8 September 1998/Accepted: 9 June 1999     

The evolution in China's fertility and an analysis of population development]

There have been numerous projections on China's population at the end of century. Their differences are due to different estimations on the effects of fertility determinants. 2 simulation models have been developed, both from micro and macro levels, to estimate the population at the end of the century on the basis of 6 different fertility patterns. 3 possible options for fertility patterns are discussed. 1.) The 1 child per family option means that every couple has 1 child by the year 1989, the population of China will be 1.2 billion in the year 2000. Even if this is a ideal situation, it would not be a feasible policy, as the pressure from the rural population to have more than 1 child has been increasing in recent years. Nevertheless, it is still possible for urban couples to accept having only 1 child. Therefore, encouraging more people to have 1 child should be held as a basic policy. 2.) Under the option of 2 children per family with 2 or 3 years of spacing, the total population in the year 2000 would be 1.2 - 1.4 billion, which is unacceptable in terms of the development situation. 3.) Following a differential fertility policy towards urban, rural, and minority populations would mean that urban couples would have 1 child, rural couples whose first child is a girl or those who are in special circumstance would have 2 children. Minorities would have 2 or 3 children. AMong the above options, number 3 is more likely to be achieved in view of current socioeconomic, cultural, and demographic factors.     

Demographic aspects of fertility in Thailand

Abstract Data from a national rural and urban sample survey are analysed in order to examine various demographic aspects of fertility in Thailand. Marital fertility rates found for Thailand are among the highest in Asia. Particularly noteworthy is the persistence of high fertility at older ages of childbearing for rural women. Cumulative fertility shows a pronounced relationship with age at marriage and current marital status. Women who marry at an older age or who experience disruption of their marriages are clearly more likely to have fewer children ever born. Differences in both current and cumulative fertility are strongly associated with residence. Rural women who constitute the vast majority of Thai women, experience the highest fertility, Bangkok-Thonburi women experience the lowest fertility and provincial urban women are characterized by an intermediate fertility level which is closer, however, to the experience of their counterparts in the capital than in the countryside. Rural-urban fertility differences are mitigated but by no means eliminated by differences in infant mortality. In both rural and urban areas a positive association between cumulative fertility and infant morality is evident. Breast-feeding, commonly practised for extended periods-among both rural and urban Thai women, undoubtedly serves to some extent as an intervening variable in this relationship. A comparison of current fertility with cumulative fertility strongly suggests that a decline in marital fertility has been under way recently among urban women, especially those residing in the capital, but not at all among rural women. Although it seems safe to assume that the urban fertility decline results in large part from an increasing use of contraception among urban women, those still in the reproductive ages who were using or had previously used birth control were characterized by higher cumulative fertility than women who had never practised contraception. Evidently couples resort to family planning only late in the family building process after they have already achieved or exceeded the number of children they wish to have.     

Intensive Parenting: Fertility and Breastfeeding Duration in the United States

Using 30 years of longitudinal data from a nationally representative cohort of women, we study the association between breastfeeding duration and completed fertility, fertility expectations, and birth spacing. We find that women who breastfeed their first child for five months or longer are a distinct group. They have more children overall and higher odds of having three or more children rather than two, compared with women who breastfeed for shorter durations or not at all. Expected fertility is associated with initiating breastfeeding but not with how long mothers breastfeed. Thus, women who breastfeed longer do not differ significantly from other breastfeeding women in their early fertility expectations. Rather, across the life course, these women achieve and even exceed their earlier fertility expectations. Women who breastfeed for shorter durations (1–21 weeks) are more likely to fall short of their expected fertility than to achieve or exceed their expectations, and they are significantly less likely than women who breastfeed for longer durations (≥22 weeks) to exceed their expected fertility. In contrast, women who breastfeed longer are as likely to exceed as to achieve their earlier expectations, and the difference between their probability of falling short versus exceeding their fertility expectations is relatively small and at the boundary of statistical significance (p = .096). These differences in fertility are not explained by differences in personal and family resources, including family income or labor market attachment. Our findings suggest that breastfeeding duration may serve as a proxy for identifying a distinct approach to parenting. Women who breastfeed longer have reproductive patterns quite different than their socioeconomic position would predict. They both have more children and invest more time in those children.     

The Evolution of Family Complexity from the Perspective of Nonmarital Children

We document the incidence and evolution of family complexity from the perspective of children. Following a cohort of firstborn children whose mothers were not married at the time of their birth, we consider family structure changes over the first 10 years of the child’s life—considering both full and half-siblings who are coresidential or who live in another household. We rely on detailed longitudinal administrative data from Wisconsin that include information on the timing of subsequent births to the mother and father, and detailed information on earnings, child support, and welfare. We find that 60% of firstborn children of unmarried mothers have at least one half-sibling by age 10. Our results highlight the importance of having fertility information for both fathers and mothers: estimates of the proportion of children with half-siblings would be qualitatively lower if we had fertility information on only one parent. Complex family structures are more likely for children of parents who are younger or who have low earnings and for those in larger urban areas. Children who have half-siblings on their mother’s side are also more likely to have half-siblings on their father’s side, and vice versa, contributing to very complex family structures—and potential child support arrangements—for some children.     

Effects of education on reproductive behavior: lessons from Pakistan

Evidence from the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 1990/91 (PDHS) and a 1987 study by Zeba A. Sathar and Karen Oppenheim on women's fertility in Karachi and the impact of educational status, corroborates the correlation between improved education for women and fertility decline. PDHS revealed that current fertility is 5.4 children/ever married woman by the end of the reproductive period. 12% currently use a contraceptive method compared to 49% in India, 40% in Bangladesh, and 62% in Sri Lanka. The social environment of high illiteracy, low educational attainment, poverty, high infant and child and maternal mortality, son preference, and low status of women leads to high fertility. Fertility rates vary by educational status; i.e., women with no formal education have 2 more children than women with at least some secondary education. Education also affects infant and child mortality and morbidity. Literacy is 31% for women and 43% for men. 30% of all males and 20% of all females have attended primary school. Although most women know at least 1 contraceptive method, it is the urban educated woman who is twice as likely to know a source of supply and 5 times more likely to be a user. The Karachi study found that lower fertility among better educated urban women is an unintended consequence of women's schooling and deliberate effort to limit the number of children they have. Education-related fertility differentials could not be explained by the length of time women are at risk of becoming pregnant (late marriage age). Fertility limitation may be motivated by the predominant involvement in the formal work force and higher income. The policy implications are the increasing female schooling is a good investment in lowering fertility; broader improvements also need to be made in economic opportunities for women, particularly in the formal sector. Other needs are for increasing availability and accessibility of contraceptive and family planning services and increasing availability and accessibility of contraceptive and family planning services and increasing knowledge of contraception. The investment will impact development and demography and is an adjunct to child health an survival.     

The relationship of family planning to savings and consumption in Taiwan

This study relates fertility behavior to modern economic behavior, namely, saving and consumption of modern durables, for a sample of couples in Taiwan. It uses only couples who say they want no more children, and these couples are further classified by current use of contraception and by whether or not they already had excess fertility. Couples who are successful fertility planners, i.e., those who have no unwanted children and are current users of contraception, are distinctive with regard to modern economic behavior as compared to couples who do not use contraception or have excess fertility. Successful planners are more likely to save and to have more modern durables; these differentials remain when adjustments are made for the effects of family income, wife’s age, wife’s education, and duration of marriage. It seems that the kind of planning behavior which enables a couple to successfully plan their family size also enables them to manage their economic affairs so that they can save and enjoy more modern consumption goods.     

Reassessing the Insurance Effect: A Qualitative Analysis of Fertility Behavior in Senegal and Zimbabwe

A number of prominent demographers have recently reiterated the argument that a lasting mortality decline is a key determinant of the fertility transition. Of the main hypothesized pathways linking fertility to mortality, the one least studied is the insurance hypothesis: the notion that, in high‐mortality contexts, people decide to have more children in order to anticipate possible future child deaths and lessen the risks of having too few surviving offspring. In‐depth interviews and focus groups from Zimbabwe and Senegal are used to examine this hypothesis and to extend it into a broader theory of reproductive decision making under uncertainty. Whereas insurance strategies are frequent in Zimbabwe and occur in urban Senegal, in the higher‐mortality settings—the rural Senegalese site and the recent past described by respondents in Zimbabwe and urban Senegal—deliberate fertility‐limitation strategies are rare. The data depict fundamental changes in attitudes, strategies, and behaviors concerning family size over time and, in Senegal, over space. Important reproductive goals and risks extend far beyond numbers of children and mortality. Parents seek to have healthy, successful children for many reasons including companionship, descendants, and old‐age support. Diverse investments in child quality (their education, health, etc.) and quantity (numbers of births) are the main means to attain these goals and, less recognized by demographers, are also important ways for parents to manage uncertainty in family‐building outcomes; the “classic” insurance mechanism is only one, often minor, aspect of the quantity option.     

How parenthood experiences influence desire for more children in Australia: A qualitative study

The low-fertility debate in developed countries has focused on the limits to family size posed by the financial costs of raising children, and difficulties combining work and family. Little attention has been given to the physical and socio-psychological experiences of conception, pregnancy, birth and early parenthood, and their potential effect on parity progression. Womens rising education and workforce participation rates are often seen as key factors in fertility decline, offering attractive alternatives to motherhood, but research suggests that they also undermine levels of knowledge, confidence and interest in motherhood. Demographers have made almost no link between people having fewer children than they might otherwise have had and their previous childbearing and childrearing experiences. Interviews conducted in South Australia in 2003–04 with parents of both small and large families show that fertility and family size are influenced both negatively and positively by experiences of having had children. The paper argues that if low fertility rates are to be stabilized or raised in developed countries, then researchers and policymakers must consider the physical and socio-psychological costs of having children for parents, and provide support mechanisms so that experiences of parenthood contribute as little as possible to fertility gaps and delayed fertility.     

Migrant fertility in Ghana: selection versus adaptation and disruption as causal mechanisms

The aim of the study presented in this paper is to disentangle the roles of three mechanisms -- selection, adaptation, and disruption -- in influencing migrant fertility in Ghana. Using data from the 1998 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, we fit Poisson and sequential logit regression models to discern the effects of the above mechanisms on cumulative fertility and annual probabilities of birth. Characteristics of migrants from four types of migration stream are examined and compared with those of non-migrants at origin and destination. We find substantial support for the selection hypothesis among both rural-urban and urban-rural migrants. Disruption is evident only in the fertility timing of second and higher-order births in Ghana. Our finding that migrants bear children at about the same rates as the natives at destination implies that the growth rate of cities will slow down quickly and that the rural population will continue to have high fertility. Thus to achieve a reduction in the national fertility level, family planning activities need to be directed towards rural areas.     

Age at marriage,family planning practices,and other variables as correlates of fertility in Korea

The relationships between fertility and thirteen variables are examined in three groups of married Korean women, about 400 each from urban, rural, and semi-rural areas. Data were obtained by interview. Age at marriage and family planning practice are the strongest predictors of fertility and account for about 10 percent and 7 percent of the total variance, respectively. Other factors which accounted for lesser fractions of variability are ideal number of children, rural versus urban residence, education, aspiration for daughters, exposure to mass media, and economic status. Most of the relationships appear to be stable over time; others, which are associated with modernization, appear to be changing. The thirteen variables combined can account for a maximum of 40 percent of the variance in fertility.     

Determinants of fertility and the unmet need for family planning in Indonesia

Indonesia's fertility has declined to an average of slightly more than 3 children/woman. The islands of Java and Bali have the lowest birth rates. Indonesia's family planning program has been a model of innovation, flexibility, and community involvement, and has been effective in reducing fertility, changing family preferences, and increasing contraceptive use. Fertility decline is also determined by factors other than contraceptive use, as provinces in Jakarta and East Java has low fertility and low contraceptive use. Recent research by Suyono and Palmore found that among cohorts of women in Jakarta lowest fertility rates were explained by greater nonexposure to pregnancy in an unmarried state or by a divorced or widowed status, and by infecundity. In East Java, fertility determinants were the same with the possible addition of lower coital frequency. The study estimated nonexposure due to marriage, infecundity, and contraceptive use. Policy considerations, however, are concerned with the exposed state of the percentage of time women are currently married, fecund, not using contraceptive, and sexually active. Suyono and Palmore also calculated the percentage of time spent in the exposed state by province. The estimates ranged from 12% in Yogyakarta to 25% in West Java and the Outer Islands. Exposed was further divided into groups with a manifest, latent, and no current need. Women with a manifest need for family planning are those who are aware of their contraceptive needs to stop or postpone childbearing and not using. Manifest need was highest in high fertility areas: 12% in Central Java, 13% in West Java, and 12% in the Outer Islands. Programs targeting these women should focus on wider availability of information and services. Women with latent needs are unaware of their need for family planning and are not using contraception. These women were also concentrated in high fertility areas. The percentage of years spent in the latent unmet need state was estimated at 23-24% in West Java and the Outer Islands. Program emphasis should be on education and motivation to show how family size can be controlled. Women with current need can be educated toward future acceptance.     

Costs and benefits of children: implications for population policy

Family size preferences are strongly affected by parents' perceptions of the value, economic contributions, and costs of children. Better understanding of these factors can help policy-makers to improve the effectiveness of population IEC campaigns, design strategies to persuade couples to have smaller families, assess the relationship between economic development and family size preferences, and devise national population policies and family planning programs that reflect individual choices. Parents in high-fertility countries are more likely to perceive children as productive investments than those in low-fertility countries. Parents in the former countries maintain children are an economic advantage or provide practical assistance in the household; they are less likely to emphasize the psychological advantages of children. As economic development occurs, and parents no longer value children for their economic contributions, psychological and social reasons become more important. Changing fertility preferences is more complex than providing couples with family planning services. Similarly, efforts to persuade families that large families are a burden are successful only when families are already interested in reducing their family size. Efforts to persuade couples to have smaller families are likely to be more successful if there are alternative sources of old-age support available, for example, from increased household savings, public or private pensions, or greater contributions from 1st and 2nd children. Investments in education and training, especially for women and children, would also support these goals.     

How development programs can affect fertility: the case of Bangladesh

Improving living standards and increasing productivity in developing countries may result in fertility reduction. In Bangladesh, government policy stresses rural development and fertility reduction. Programs that raise women's status reduce fertility. Educational level is inversely correlated to childbearing. Women aged 25-29 with a Secondary School Certificate have 2.4 children, versus 4.0 for those with no education. Employment also decreases fertility. Thus, improving the educational and employment status of women could have major effects on fertility. Studying the Bangladesh Rural Social Services program revealed that community organization efforts and self-help programs for economic and social improvement also decrease fertility. Rural electrification programs, which have been emphasized in development planning, contribute to changing attitudes and behavior of residents of these regions. In addition to electrification, improved transportation and communications should enhance the spread of information to rural areas. Agricultural development programs, such as the Comilla development program, have not affected fertility. This is attributed to the concentration of benefits to a few farms, with the majority becoming poorer. Unless agricultural development benefits are widely distributed, there will probably be little effect on fertility. Thus, the development programs most likely to affect fertility are those which emphasize female education and employment, open rural areas to information and ideas, and are open to a whole community.