An analysis of the size of the family household and family structure in China]

Since 1949, great social and economic changes have taken place in China. The entire economic structure and social relations are no longer the way they used to be. These changes have also had a strong impact on the size of family households and family structure. Major changes are summarized as follows: (1) The size of the present family household has been greatly reduced from its earlier size. The main reason for this reduction in size is the change of the social system. Under the new social system, the natural population growth rate and family structure have shown the greatest change from the past. (2) The major change in family structure is that small families have replaced the traditional large families. Under the large family system, several generations may stay together as one household, and brothers do not divide the large family even after they are married. Under the small family system, a household is normally limited to the parents and their children. With the gradual disappearance of large families, small families are increasing rapidly. Some households with three generations living together are still in existence, and the young and the old may support each other in their daily life. Both in cities and in rural areas, the traditional custom of respecting one's old parents still exists. There must be a value and necessity for the existence of this particular kind of family structure.     

High Fertility and Children's Schooling in Ghana: Sex Differences in Parental Contributions and Educational Outcomes

This paper explores the linkages at the family level between sustained high fertility and children's schooling in Ghana, in the context of a constrained economic environment and rising school fees. The unique feature of the paper is its exploration of the operational significance of alternative definitions of “sib size” – the number of “same-mother” siblings and “same-father” siblings – in relation to enrolment, grade attainment, and school drop-out for boys and girls of primary and secondary school age. The analysis is based on the first wave of the Ghana Living Standards Measurement Survey (GLSS) data, collected in 1987–88. The results of the statistical analysis lead to the conclusion that the co-existence of high fertility, rising school costs, and economic reversals is having a negative impact on the education of girls, in terms of drop-out rates and grade attainment. Some of the costs of high fertility are borne by older siblings (particularly girls) rather than by parents, with the result that children from larger families experience greater inequality between themselves and their siblings by sex and birth order. Because fathers have more children on average than mothers, the inequality between their children appears to be even greater than between mothers' children, particularly given the importance of fathers' role in the payment of school fees. The paper concludes that the greatest cost for children in Ghana of sustained high fertility is likely to be the reinforcement of traditional sex roles, largely a product of high fertility in the past.     

Effect of development of rural commodity economy on family planning]

The paper discusses the effects of the changes of rural income level on family planning practice based a survey of 200 rural families in a affluent vegetable producing area of suburban Beijing. In 1984, 99.7% of child birth followed the local birth planning, and 99.1% of families with one child received One Child Certificates. The annual per capita income of the 200 families was 1,092 yuan (1 US$ = 3.7 yuan) in 1984 even higher than the community average. The number of children was negatively associated with the per capita income and per capita consumption except families with 4 children, most of whom have grown up. The rural mechanization in the community has greatly increased the need for skills and technology rather than strong laborers. The provision of community welfare programs and the increased living standard changed the value of children and also changed people's perception in favor of gender equality. Among families with 1 or 2 children, most preferred to have girls. And among families with more children, the preferred family size is smaller than the actual size, which shows a tendency towards favoring a small family. Among 1 child families, 58.7% considered 1 boy and 1 girl to be ideal, and 37.7% was happy with the only child. As the community becomes richer, both the community and individual families increased their investment in education. The spending on education per child was over 2 times as high in 1 child families than the families with more children. The educational status of parents is positively associated with the exception of children's future education and current spending on education. The concern of parents over children's education is an important factor in improving the quality of labor force. Women of higher education status are more acceptable to contraception and family planning policy. The relatively high level of education of the community has been conducive to it fertility decline.     

A research on the assurance of family planning and providing for the aged]

An important cause of resistance to China's family planning (FP) program in rural areas is the need to have children to support parents in their old age. Provision of insurance for old age support will facilitate the implementation of the FP program among the rural population. A trial project was initiated in five cities and counties in Fujian province i 1986. The program included schemes for both eligible couples and for single children. The township or the village pays a lump sum or monthly premium to the insurance company for each couple, which enables them to collect 30-35 Yuan/month after they reach 55 years of age. To further expand the insurance program, a survey was conducted in 1987 to determine whether rural farmers would be willing and able to pay the insurance premium themselves. 77% of the respondents reported that they could afford to pay 60% of the premium. Among them, 59% were willing to pay. It was suggested that besides individual purchase of the insurance plan, the rural communities could contribute to the payment of the premium from the fines for unplanned births, from the local tax, and from the country government budget. Preferential treatment should be given to the couples of two daughters who receives sterilization; the communities should pay for a larger share of their premium. The current insurance scheme needs to be reformed so that the plan can offer more than the individual's bank savings. To do so, the insurance company needs to be able to invest their premium income and obtain higher returns. The employees of the insurance company need to improve their work efficiency to win the trust of the people in the program.     

The uncertain lifetime and the timing of human capital investment

I examine the effects of mortality decline on fertility and human capital investment decision of parents taking into account the uncertainty about child survival. I propose a model, where parents decide on their fertility before the uncertainty is realized, but they choose to invest only in human capital of their surviving children. The model implies a positive relationship between mortality and fertility and a negative one between mortality and educational investment. It has been argued elsewhere that as, in reality, most of the mortality decline occurred in infancy, it should not affect the human capital investment decision, which comes later in life. Thus, increased survival chances should not promote growth by raising the human capital investment. This paper argues the contrary and proposes a mechanism where mortality decline at any age before the teen years can promote growth by raising human capital investment regardless of the timing of the educational investment.      

Fertility and Financial Development in South Asia

The paper empirically examines old-age security hypothesis to explain fertility rates in South Asia. Panel data is used for the period 1972–2013 for seven South Asian countries which include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The estimated results reveal that in South Asia fertility rate decreases with the increase in financial development. Thus, the findings support old-age security hypothesis that parents use children as financial instruments to secure their old age. This paper validates the theory that the availability of alternative financial tools reduces the incentives of households to have large offspring. Infant mortality is also shown an important factor for high fertility rate in South Asia. This implies that households cover their risk from losing children by producing more children. The results also reveal that fertility rate decreases with the increase in per capita income, which implies that households treat children as inferior good in this region. In other words, households prefer quality of children over quantity of children when their income level increases. The results have also shown that fertility decreases with the increase in education, urbanization, agriculture productivity and industrialization. The study has some important policy implications.     

The economic rationality of high fertility: An investigation illustrated with Nigerian survey data

Summary In much of the developing world, especially among rural populations who usually are the majority, field researchers find that fertility is high and fairly stable and that there is little evidence either that high-fertility parents are relatively economically disadvantaged or that they believe themselves to be so. On the other hand most of modern economic-demographic theory suggests that the members of large families should be worse off than the members of small families. It is argued that the 'hardest' data are those of high fertility and the relative well being of large families and that the proper social scientific approach should have been to base further investigation upon such findings. It is suggested that much of the economic theorizing has erred because of bad survey data and ethnocentric bias in the research. Data are analysed from research programmes in Ghana and Nigeria to show that high fertility is not as disadvantageous as is often suggested. The main source of evidence is Project 2 of the Nigerian segment of the Changing African Family Project, a 1973 sample survey of 1,499 females and 1,497 males, Yoruba and over 17 years of age, in the Western and Lagos States of Nigeria. It is concluded that the economic ends of a society are largely determined by its social ends and that the economic rationality of high fertility can be determined only within the context of a society's structure and ends. There can be no such thing as a purely economic theory of fertility. It is also concluded that the society studied is moving towards a condition where high fertility will be increasingly disadvantageous and that this is being brought about more by Westernization than modernization.     

A welcome family planning service center

The Family Planning Service Center of Luohu District was organized by the Family Planning Committee of the district to help couples of child bearing age and 1-child families to overcome their difficulties. The services provided by the center include: distributing contraceptives, and providing consultation on birth control, contraception, healthy births and better upbringing, and maternal and child care. A peculiar feature of the center is that one sees many young and middle-aged people of both sexes going in and out of the place at all hours of the day and night. Workers from the center even go to offices and factories to provide services and distribute contraceptives. In close cooperation with neighborhood family planning centers, the center has also set up offices to distribute contraceptives and give advice. It is estimated that in Luohu District, at present, 90% of the couples of childbearing age are current users of contraceptives. In the city, the proportion of 1-child families is quite large. As a rule in China, preschool children are looked after by their grandparents. Living separately from their parents, however, many couples in the city find it difficult to find someone to care for their children. The center also provides assistance in finding child care help. The center has also invited experts and medical personnel to give 10 lectures on child nutriology, child psychology, birth control, contraception and pregnancy health.     

A joint model of marital childbearing and marital disruption

Married couples with children appear to be less likely to end their marriages than childless couples, especially when the children are young. Although this suggests that children affect the chances that their parents will divorce, the process may not be so simple: the chances that the marriage will last also may affect couples’ willingness to make the commitment to the marriage implied by having children. This paper uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to test the hypothesis that the risk of disruption faced by a married woman affects the chances that she will conceive and bear a child. The model used takes into account the simultaneous relationships between marital dissolution and marital fertility by including the hazard of disruption as a predictor of timing and likelihood of marital conception, and by including the results of previous fertility decisions as predictors of disruption of the marriage. We find that the hazard of disruption has strong negative effects on the hazard of marital childbearing, lengthening the intervals between births and decreasing the chances that a child will be born. This effect appears to be strongest for women who have had at least one child, either before or during the current marriage, although it is also large for childless women. Explicitly including the hazard of disruption in models of marital childbearing has sizable and important effects on many predictors of fertility.     

一孩与二孩家庭育龄妇女生育意愿比较

基于江苏苏南某农村790户家庭的抽样调查数据,比较一孩与二孩家庭育龄妇女的生育意愿,并运用回归模型对影响两类家庭育龄妇女生育意愿的因素进行研究。结果显示,两类家庭育龄妇女的意愿生育数量、意愿生育性别和意愿生育间隔没有显著差异,仅在对"女性生育的最大年龄"的认识上二孩妇女明显低于一孩妇女。但两类家庭育龄妇女在生育意愿的影响因素上存在着较大的差异。     

The effects of the age and structure of population on family change]

The age structure of a population is one basic factor of population research. It is not only affected by birth, death, immigration, and marriage, but it also reflected in changes of family size. The article analyzed it from two aspects: (1) the age structure of population acts on the size and structure of the family. The younger the age structure, the larger the family size. Otherwise, it is the opposite. According to the 1982 census, 35.4% of the population was 0-14 years in rural areas, and average family size was 4.6; but in urban areas 26.0% of the population was 0-14 years and family size was 3.9. The family was characterized as a nuclear family as industrialization in economic development increased and the population aged. In the 1982 census, 64.7% were nuclear family and 6% were aging population in China. Three- generation families (or more) have decreased dramatically. The change of family size and structure is affected by change of internal family age structure. The younger population (0-14 years) is dependent and 90% live with their parents. The adult population (15-59) years are more affected by marriage, birth and social economic action. Families are established in this age period and give much more effect to fertility. The aging population (over 60) years is facing changes. They appear to be a "Defect" family because the wife or husband has passed away. They change from independent to dependent. 78.3% population over 60 years were dependent on children or social welfare, only 21.7% were independent according to the survey in Beijing Changping County.     

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.     

Effects of the one-child family policy on second and third births in Hebei,Shaanxi and Shanghai

This paper uses the proportional hazards model to assess the effect of the Chinese one-child policy on second and third births. The differential effects of the policy between the urban and rural areas and by the sex of previous children are highlighted. First, the urban-rural differentials have increased much after the policy, suggesting a more rapid increase in the costs of children and stricter government controls in the urban areas. Second, the sex of children has become a more important factor after the policy. The considerably higher risks to a subsequent birth among sonless families indicate the persistent strong son preferences among Chinese parents, especially in less developed areas. Although son preferences seem suppressed in Shanghai, the higher risks to a second birth after the death of a son compared to a daughter are indicative of the son preferences even in Shanghai. Relaxation of the one-child policy may increase the Chinese fertility.     

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.     

第一代独生子女婚后居住模式——基于江苏省的经验研究

二十世纪七、八十年代出生的第一代独生子女正处在婚育阶段,与此同时,他们的父母也在逐渐步人老年。文章利用2007年江苏生育调查数据,从代际关系角度考察了第一代独生子女的婚后居住模式及影响因素,结果表明：子代需要亲代帮助照料年幼孙代的需求、亲代需要子代提供照料的需求显著提高了独生子女婚后与父母同住的可能性,代际交换关系显著影响了居住模式;与非独生子女家庭相比,独生子女家庭更可能与夫妻一方或双方父母同住;城市独生子女比农村独生子女更可能婚后与父母同住：独生子女的性别属性对居住模式有显著影响,独生子与自己父母同住的比例明显大于独生女同她们的父母同住的比例。     

Returns on Lifetime Investments in Children in Egypt

Parental expectations about the companionship and assistance they will receive in later life from their children are key considerations in family formation decisions. We explore patterns of parents’ investment and the support and contact they receive from adult children in Egypt, where fertility is falling and sources of support at all life stages are in flux. Using data from a survey of older adults in Ismailia governorate, we consider parents’ past investments in childbearing, child survival, and children’s education and marriage, as well as recent assistance to adult children via housing, care for grandchildren, gifts, and money. The returns from children considered include economic assistance, instrumental support, and visits. Most parental investments are associated with frequent visits from children. The assistance children provide to parents is gendered: sons tend to provide economic transfers, whereas daughters tend to provide instrumental help. A greater number of surviving children is most strongly associated with parents’ receipt of multiple types of later-life returns. Investments in children’s education and marriage are not associated with assistance, but recent assistance to children—especially economic transfers and provision of housing—is associated with receiving instrumental assistance from adult children.     

Gender inequalities and demographic behavior

A summary was provided of the central findings about gender inequalities in Egypt, India, Ghana, and Kenya published by the Population Council in 1994. These countries exhibited gender inequalities in different ways: the legal, economic, and educational systems; family planning and reproductive health services; and the health care system. All countries had in common a high incidence of widowhood. Widowhood was linked with high levels of insecurity, which were linked with high fertility. Children thus became insurance in old age. In Ghana, women's insecurity was threatened through high levels of marital instability and polygyny. In Egypt, insecurity was translated into economic vulnerability because of legal discrimination against women when family systems were disrupted. In India and all four countries, insecurity was reflective of limited access to education, an impediment to economic autonomy. In all four countries, women's status was inferior due to limited control over reproductive decision making about childbearing limits and contraception. In India, the cultural devaluation of girls contributed to higher fertility to satisfy the desire for sons. In India and Egypt, family planning programs were dominated by male-run organizations that were more concerned about demographic objectives than reproductive health. The universal inequality was the burden women carry for contraception. Family planning programs have ignored the local realities of reproductive behavior, family structures, and gender relations. The assumption that husbands and wives have similar fertility goals or that fathers fully share the costs of children is mistaken in countries such as Ghana. Consequently, fertility has declined less than 13% in Ghana, but fertility has declined by over 30% in Kenya. Family planning programs must be aware of gender issues.     

Fertility survey in the rural area of Henan province]

The population of Henan Province is 72,850,000, 92% of whom live in villages. From July 12 to August 11, 1981, a fertility survey was taken of 20 communes and 31 work brigades in the counties of Fugou, Shancai, and Dengfeng, in which 38,168 people and 5700 fertility registration forms were studied. In 1980, 15% of the 3 counties' population were women aged 18-49, 80% of whom were married. The birth rate was 134.56/1000, of which the rate for married women was 172.36/1000. A random sampling from Shancai of 18-49 year old women showed an average of 2.3 children per couple. The factors influencing rural fertility are economic, social, ideological, and cultural. The economic system of distribution according to work has actually encouraged population growth because in rural areas where the standard of living is low larger families with more workers have greater incomes than smaller families with fewer workers. Early marriage and early births are encouraged under this system, as evidenced by findings in Fugou County. The survey also found that in the 3 counties, virtually everyone marries, women who work tend to work in the village close to home, high illiteracy is prevalent, and traditional attitudes of favoring males over females were all factors contributing to early and frequent births. In order to lower rural birth rates, rural economy should be developed, old attitudes and habits should be changed, and literacy should be increased.