Family Planning and Women’s and Children’s Health: Long-Term Consequences of an Outreach Program in Matlab, Bangladesh

We analyze the impact of an experimental maternal and child health and family planning program that was established in Matlab, Bangladesh, in 1977. Village data from 1974, 1982, and 1996 suggest that program villages experienced a decline in fertility of about 17 %. Household data from 1996 confirm that this decline in “surviving fertility” persisted for nearly two decades. Women in program villages also experienced other benefits: increased birth spacing, lower child mortality, improved health status, and greater use of preventive health inputs. Some benefits also diffused beyond the boundaries of the program villages into neighboring comparison villages. These effects are robust to the inclusion of individual, household, and community characteristics. We conclude that the benefits of this reproductive and child health program in rural Bangladesh have many dimensions extending well beyond fertility reduction, which do not appear to dissipate rapidly after two decades.     

Epidurals during normal labour and birth — Midwives’ attitudes and experiences

BackgroundMidwives have their own beliefs and values regarding pain during childbirth. Their preferences concerning labour pain management may influence women’s choices.AimTo gain a deeper understanding of midwives’ attitudes and experiences regarding the use of an epidural during normal labour.MethodsA qualitative approach was chosen for data collection. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted with midwives working in three different obstetric units in Norway. The transcribed interviews were analysed using Malterud’s systematic text condensation.FindingsThe analysis provided two main themes: “Normal childbirth as the goal” and “Challenges to the practice, knowledge, philosophy and experience of midwives”. Distinctive differences in experiences and attitudes were found. The workplace culture in the obstetric units affected the midwives’ attitudes and their midwifery practice. How they attended to women with epidural also differed. An epidural was often used as a substitute for continuous support when the obstetric unit was busy.DiscussionMidwives estimate labour pain differently, and this might impact the midwifery care. However, midwives’ interests and preferences concerning labour pain management should not influence women’s choices. Midwives are affected by the setting where they work, and research highlights that an epidural might lead to a focus on medical procedures instead of the normality of labour.ConclusionMidwives should be aware of how powerful their position is and how the workplace culture might influence their attitudes. The focus should be on “working with” women to promote a normal birth process, even with an epidural.     

Is demography destiny? The role of structural and demographic factors in Australis past and future labour supply

Following the release of the Intergenerational Report, the Australian Treasury identified the levers to address the economic effects of demographic ageing as ‘the three Ps’: population, participation and productivity. To date, the first ‘P’, population, has been treated as an exogenous factor, with the common view being that there is very little that the government can do to supplant demographic ageing. Focusing upon labour supply, this paper shows how variation in Australia’s underlying demography can significantly alter Australia’s future labour supply. Although governments cannot redirect the cohort flow component of population ageing, much can be achieved in promoting growth of the labour supply by maintaining or increasing fertility (in the longer term), or increasing targeted migration (in the short to medium term). This paper also decomposes the relative role of cohort flow, changing demography and changing labour force participation on the growth of the labour supply over the past 20 years. Over this period, the entry of the baby boom generation (cohort flow) and increased labour force participation of women accounted for almost all of the growth in the labour force. Changing demography had very little effect. However, Australias future labour supply will not include a large increase in cohort flow (as caused by the baby boomers) or a very large increase in female labour force participation. Regardless of the assumptions used, labour supply growth will be considerably lower in the next and subsequent 20 years, when compared to the previous 20.     

Family size and children’s education in Vietnam

Data from the nationally representative 1994 Inter-Censal Demographic Survey are used to examine the association between family size and children s schooling in Vietnam. The data provide information on several education measures for all children over age 10, including children no longer residing in the household. Although a clear inverse bivariate association between family size and children s school attendance and educational attainment is evident, multivariate analysis controlling for urban/rural residence, region, parents’ education, household wealth, and child’s age, reveals that much of this association, especially that predicting educational attainment, is attributable to these other influences. Moreover, much of the effect that remains after statistical adjustment for the other influences is seen mainly at the largest family sizes. We consider the implications of these findings for current population policy in Vietnam and the possible features of the Vietnamese context that might account for the modest association.     

Going Back Part-time: Family Leave Legislation and Women’s Return to Work

Using a multinomial logit model with data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this paper tests whether the implementation of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is associated with an increase in return to work at part-time status among first-time mothers working full-time during their pregnancy. I find a statistically significant trend of increasingly higher odds of returning to work at part-time status relative to return at full-time status, beginning in 1993 (the year in which the FMLA is implemented). Furthermore, an additional week of either state or federal leave is significantly associated with a higher odds of return at part-time status. This article provides evidence that job protection and leave legislation may help facilitate higher levels of labor force participation among women with small children, through more flexible work arrangements.     

Family Structure and Children’s Economic Well-Being: Incorporating Same-Sex Cohabiting Mother Families

Research on family structure and child well-being rarely includes children in same-sex parent families, a notable omission since 28 % of female–female couple households contain children. Using the 2010–2013 pooled current population survey (CPS), we examined children’s economic well-being by family structure. These data were ideal for this study because they included a sizeable number of children in same-sex cohabiting mother families and the CPS measured both official and supplemental poverty, incorporating the cohabiting partner. Using the official poverty measure, children in same-sex cohabiting mother families were more likely to be poor than their counterparts in either different-sex cohabiting or married parent families. Using the supplemental poverty measure, children in same-sex mother families were no more likely to be poor than children in all other types of different-sex two-parent families.     

Smokers’ Sexual Behavior and Their Satisfaction with Family Life

Smokers tend to be more impatient and prefer immediate benefits compared with non-smokers. If people follow their primitive instincts they will engage in sexual behavior. Impatient people are more likely to have sex. However, for married people, having sex with a spouse is considered to be an investment in family life. Based on individual level data of Japan General Social Surveys, this paper investigated how sexual behavior differs between smokers and non-smokers. In addition to it, determinants of life satisfaction are also investigated. The important findings through the interval regression model and the ordered probit model are: (1) frequency of sex is positively associated with family satisfaction; (2) unmarried smokers are more likely to have sex than unmarried non-smokers; (3) married smokers are less likely to have sex than married non-smokers. It follows from estimation results that smoking behavior alerts us to his unobserved characteristics before marriage, thus reducing information asymmetry.     

Adieu Rabenmutter—culture,fertility, female labour supply,the gender wage gap and childcare

This paper studies the effect of cultural attitudes on childcare provision, fertility, female labour supply and the gender wage gap. Cross-country data show that fertility, female labour force participation and childcare provision are positively correlated with each other, while the gender wage gap seems to be negatively correlated with these variables. The paper presents a model with endogenous fertility, female labour supply and childcare choices driven by cultural attitudes which fits these facts. There may exist multiple equilibria: one with zero childcare provision, low fertility and female labour supply and high wage gap and one with high childcare provision, high fertility and female labour supply and low wage gap.     

FWCW-NGO FORUM:Population and Family Planning Workshop

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China's ‘later’ marriage policy and its demographic consequences

Using data from China's One-Per-Thousand Fertility Survey conducted in 1982, a cohort analysis is carried out to estimate the demographic consequences of the later marriage policy implemented in the People's Republic of China. The findings show that the later marriage policy had a strong positive effect on mean age at first marriage and first birth but a negative impact on the length of the first-birth interval, suggesting that the depressing effects on fertility of the administratively enforced postponement of marriage are more or less offset by adjustments over the first-birth interval by Chinese couples.     

Working mothers and sons’ preferences regarding female labor supply: direct evidence from stated preferences

We investigate the argument that men who are raised by working mothers develop a preference that is favorable toward working women and, consequently, are more likely to have working wives. We test this hypothesis using the Japanese General Social Surveys 2000–2003. We directly examine the responses to the opinion survey’s questions regarding appropriate gender roles. The estimation results indicate that men raised by full-time working mothers are less likely to support traditional gender roles. Those men are also less likely to believe in the negative impact of a mother’s working on her children’s development.      

Japan’s changing fertility mechanisms and its policy responses

This paper discusses Japan’s decline in fertility over the past 50 years. The change in Japan’s postwar fertility is analysed using formal demographic tools such as parity progression ratios and decomposition methods. The analytical results show that before the oil crisis of 1973, the reduction in marital fertility played a dominant role, while the delayed timing of marriage has been a principal factor since the mid-1970s. The delayed timing of first and second births has also played a relatively important role in determining actual fertility levels in the 1990s. The paper examines various socio-economic factors contributing to these demographic shifts over time in postwar Japan. A number of policies and programs implemented over the past decade by the Japanese government to boost fertility are briefly described, together with their limitations.     

Family Size and Children’s Education: Evidence from the One-Child Policy in China

Population Research and Policy Review - Evidence on a causal link between family size and children’s education is still inconclusive. Recent empirical studies have focused heavily on China,...     

Going to extremes: Family structure, children’s well-being, and social science

In this article I argue that public discussions of demographic issues are often conducted in a troubling pattern in which one extreme position is debated in relation to the opposite extreme. This pattern impedes our understanding of social problems and is a poor guide to sound public policies. To illustrate this thesis I use the case of social scientific research examining how children are affected by not living with two biological parents while they are growing up. Over the last decade, I maintain, most of the public, and even many social scientists, have been puzzled and poorly informed by this debate. In particular I consider Judith Wallerstein's clinically based claims of the pervasive, profound harm caused by divorce and, at the other extreme, Judith Rich Harris's reading of behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology, which leads her to dismiss the direct effects of divorce. Neither extreme gives a clear picture of the consequences of growing up in a single-parent family or a stepfamily.     

Motherhood,labor force behavior,and women’s careers: An empirical assessment of the wage penalty for motherhood in britain,germany, and the united states

Using harmonized longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we trace career prospects after motherhood for five cohorts of American, British, and West German women around the 1960s. We establish wage penalties for motherhood between 9% and 18% per child, with wage losses among American and British mothers being lower than those experienced by mothers in Germany. Labor market mechanisms generating the observed wage penalty for motherhood differ markedly across countries, however. For British and American women, work interruptions and subsequent mobility into mother-friendly jobs fully account for mothers’ wage losses. In contrast, respective penalties are considerably smaller in Germany, yet we observe a substantial residual wage penalty that is unaccounted for by mothers’ observable labor market behavior. We interpret this finding as indicating a comparatively more pronounced role for statistical discrimination against mothers in the German labor market.     

The Impact of Fathers’ Work and Family Conflicts on Children’s Self-Esteem: The Hong Kong Case

Work and family conflicts are always viewed as issues of human resource management or occupational health. Insufficient attention has been focused on the impact on child development and quality of parenting, especially regarding the impact of a father’s work. To examine the impact of work and family conflicts on the quality of father–child interactions in Hong Kong, a cross-sectional survey was conducted. In total, 556 pairs of working fathers and their school-aged children participated in the survey. The findings of the survey indicated that fathers’ work-to-family conflicts negatively affected the quality of father–child interactions, which in turn caused harm to children’s self-esteem. In addition to work-family conflicts, a low income level of the fathers, a larger number of children in the family, and the presence in the family of children approaching adolescence were significant risk factors to the quality of father–child interactions. The mothers’ active parental involvement and the complexity of the fathers’ occupation were significant protective factors of the quality of father–child interactions. To facilitate strong family bonding and good quality parenting, possible measures to ensure a healthy work-family balance among working fathers are discussed.     

President Jiang Zemin on China’s Population and Family Planning

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