经济增长、生育政策与生育率——基于跨国面板数据的实证研究

文章基于不同发展水平、采取不同生育政策分布在不同地区的十个国家1970—2009年的面板数据对经济增长、生育政策与生育率之间的关系进行实证分析,对近年来部分学者提出的经济增长与生育率之间的U形关系,采取选择不同样本、加入政策变量和其他与生育率相关的重要经济指标如妇女的教育程度、城镇化率、工业化率等进行再检验,结果支持该假说,经济增长在经济发展程度整体较低的阶段与生育率呈现较高的负相关,但当经济增长达到一定程度时,收入效应取代替代效应对生育率起主要推动作用,如果再辅之以相关的激励政策和措施,生育率会出现轻微的反弹。因此,对于已采取生育控制政策的国家,可以结合经济社会发展指标权衡利弊,适时调整政策。     

Women,Demography, and Politics: How Lower Fertility Rates Lead to Democracy

Where connections between demography and politics are examined in the literature, it is largely in the context of the effects of male aspects of demography on phenomena such as political violence. This project aims to place the study of demographic variables’ influence on politics, particularly on democracy, squarely within the scope of political and social sciences, and to focus on the effects of woman-related demographics—namely, fertility rate. I test the hypothesis that demographic variables—female-related predictors, in particular—have an independent effect on political structure. Comparing countries over time, this study finds a growth in democracy when fertility rates decline. In the theoretical framework developed, it is family structure as well as the economic and political status of women that account for this change at the macro and micro levels. Findings based on data for more than 140 countries over three decades are robust when controlling not only for alternative effects but also for reverse causality and data limitations.     

Economic determinants of fertility: Results from cross sectional aggregate data

Census data for areal units, SMSA’s in 1960 and cities in 1940, are used to test hypotheses and estimate parameters concerning the influence of a variety of socioeconomic variables on fertility rates of ever married white and nonwhite women aged 25–29, 30–34, 35–44, and 45–49. An economic model of the demand for children is adopted as the theoretical framework. The principal findings are that the market earnings opportunities for wives have an important negative effect on the fertility rate and that male income, representing the income of husbands, has a small but positive effect on fertility. The implication of these results is that changes in economic variables, for example, improvements in the employment opportunities and wages for wives or the establishment of a children’s allowance program, may be expected to affect fertility.     

Economic motives for family limitation

Abstract Taiwan can boast one of the most rapid rates of economic development in the world over the past 20 years. Taiwan is also in the midst of the demographic transition. The nature of the connection between economic development and the onset and progress of the fertility decline is far from clear, however. Rather than explore the relation between income and fertility change, this paper will be concerned with some of the economic motivations which may be responsible for fertility decline during the demographic transition. Inquiries in this area have been handicapped by having to rely on aggregative or on household data which included only a very limited set of economic variables (other than income) along with demographic data. In order to re-examine the linkages between economic change and fertility change at the family level, a special survey was conducted in Taiwan in 1969. While recognizing that economic factors are not wholly, perhaps not even primarily, responsible for the lowering of the birth rate, the central interest of this paper is the complex of cost and benefit considerations which may contribute to a decline of the rate, using the new data for Taiwan.     

Fertility and economic and social development in Turkey: a cross-sectional and time series study

Abstract The paper explores the impact of modernization on the fertility levels in Turkey, which started deliberate efforts at economic, social, and political transformation in the early 1920s. It is a disaggregative study using 'province' as the unit of observation. A relatively consistent series of data on population and various economic and social variables was available with quinquennial censuses starting with the 1940 Census. The technique of reverse projection is used to estimate provincial crude birth rates. Since 1955 there has been a consistent decline in the fertility level. A chain-relationship model is estimated using both cross-sectional and panel data. A major finding of the study is that in Turkey, continuing modernization and the concomitant spread of female education will result in a continuing decline in the fertility rate. This negative influence, stable and substantial over time, is largely due to factors other than the usual association between education and opportunity cost of female employment, such as changing attitudes and tastes. Also with the spread of economic and social development influencing the society's norm for average age at marriage and the proportion of women married, the marital rate, though not so significant as education, imparts a direct depressing effect on the aggregate period fertility rate at any given time.     

An attempt at evaluation of the economic and social factors [influencing] the Polish population's fertility formation

This analysis of economic determinants of fertility in Poland shows that couples' fertility decisions are negatively influenced by factors affecting family income. Social and demographic factors were found to be unrelated to fertility. 17 socioeconomic measures were grouped as those expressing the level of economic development and determining family income size, those reflecting the level of socioeconomic development and determining the level of children's education, and those characterizing the level of social development and determining the need for health care and social security. The level of actual fertility is modeled as a linear function of variables in a main components factor analysis. Average monthly pay in the national economy (37.6%), the sold industrial production per person (13.8%), and the global agricultural production per person (13.2%) account for 64.6% of the variance. Among the social factors, findings indicate that a higher feeling of security is related to lower fertility, but economic factors have a stronger influence. Voivodeships are grouped as having low levels of economic development (24), as having high educational levels (24), and as having low levels of social security (24). Voivodeships with low levels of economic development and high parity include all the grouped voivodeships with the exception of three. Low-security voivodeships showed mixed patterns of fertility. High-education voivodeships showed a weak correlation with high fertility. Only three voivodeships have low economic and security factors and high education factors, and only one voivodeship has high fertility. Of the three voivodeships with high security and economic factors and low education factors, all have low parity.     

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.     

Urbanization, non-familial work, education, and fertility in Taiwan

Abstract It is well known, that there is a relationship between the level of development of a society and its level offertility.(1) However, it is not clear which of the complex ofvariables associated with development are primarily associated with the reduction of fertility. Urbanization, female labour force participation and education are three of the variables most commonly cited as bearing a causal relationship to fertility. Urbanization implies a change of environment of a substantial portion of the population which may result in a change in the value placed on large families. This is particularly true when urban mortality is lower than rural, so that more children survive.(2) However, it has also been argued that urbanization results in a change in family structure from the extended to the nuclear family with a concomitant reduction in the value placed on having many children.(3) Additional changes in family patterns which are sometimes said to explain fertility reduction due to urbanization are increases in the proportion of women never marrying and increases in the age at marriage.     

Income inequality and fertility: A comparative view

Summary Most studies pertaining to the relationship between population and economic development suffer from a major flaw. Researchers use aggregate measures like income or energy consumption per head as indicators of economic development. Such aggregate measures fail to take into account the nature of the distribution of income or energy consumption to the population. The present study attempts to demonstrate the importance of incorporating the nature of distribution of resources as an important intervening variable in the study of the overall relationship between population and economic development. A measure of income inequality is developed which represents the difference between rural and urban incomes. This measure is justified in terms of the distinctiveness of urban and rural sectors in the process of development. The data used relate to societal measures of fertility, income, income inequality, etc. Consistently with existing literature, we observe that, generally speaking, economic development does entail a reduction in rural-urban income inequalities. On the other hand, a substantial part of the negative effect of an increase in income per head can be nullified if such an increase were not also accompanied by a reduction in rural-urban income inequality. Also, a substantial part of the negative effect of an increase in income per head and the level of education in reducing the level of infant mortality would be nullified if it did not also result in a reduction of rural-urban income inequality. On the other hand, it is quite possible for the level of education in a society to increase together with an increase in income per head without substantially altering the extent of inequality of income between the rural and the urban population. It is suggested that the positive relationship between rural-urban income inequality and the level of fertility is due to higher rural fertility rates in a high-inequality country. By implication, this would mean that higher standards of living for the rural population compared with its urban counterpart will have a favourable impact in reducing rural fertility.     

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.     

中国婚姻结构与生育控制对生育水平的影响分析——基于简化的邦戈茨中间变量生育率模型

利用易于获取资料的、简化的邦戈茨中间变量生育率模型分析不同时期生育控制和婚姻结构对生育水平的影响。结果表明,在生育水平下降的前期(1970~1990年),其主要影响因素是生育控制,而在生育水平下降的后期(1990~1999年),主要影响因素则是婚姻结构。在新世纪(2000~2008年)生育水平的小幅度上升中,婚姻结构和生育控制对生育水平的影响大致相当。婚姻结构和生育控制对生育水平的影响规律可从文化堕距理论中得到有力阐释。     

Urbanization,non-familial work,education, and fertility in Taiwan

It is well known, that there is a relationship between the level of development of a society and its level offertility.¹ However, it is not clear which of the complex ofvariables associated with development are primarily associated with the reduction of fertility. Urbanization, female labour force participation and education are three of the variables most commonly cited as bearing a causal relationship to fertility. Urbanization implies a change of environment of a substantial portion of the population which may result in a change in the value placed on large families. This is particularly true when urban mortality is lower than rural, so that more children survive.² However, it has also been argued that urbanization results in a change in family structure from the extended to the nuclear family with a concomitant reduction in the value placed on having many children.³ Additional changes in family patterns which are sometimes said to explain fertility reduction due to urbanization are increases in the proportion of women never marrying and increases in the age at marriage.     

Economic development and fertility

Two schools of theorists have been concerned with the effect of economic development on fertility. One school has contended that economic development has an inhibiting effect on fertility. The demographic transition which has occurred among the non-developed countries confirms their viewpoint. Another school of thought, including in its members Thomas Malthus, has believed that economic development promoted fertility. Much empirical evidence may also be brought to bear to support this viewpoint.The present paper attempts to reconcile these viewpoints. It is hypothesized that the direct effect of economic development is to increase fertility. However, various factors which usually accompany the process of economic development serve to reduce fertility. These include an increase in the level of education and a reduction in infant and childhood mortality. Making use of data for 41 nations pertaining to the decade of the 1950's, it is found that fertility is directly associated with per capita net national product when controls for other relevant variables are in8tituted. On the other hand, per capita newspaper circulation is inversely related to fertility, and infant mortality is directly related.If the hypothesis advanced in this paper is correct, relatively large governmental expenditures on health and education will enhance the reduction in fertility obtainable from an increase in national economic level alone.     

A model of endogenous divorce and endogenous fertility

This paper examines the interaction between decisions on divorce and fertility. The analysis generates two major implications. Firstly, it complements the existing literature on endogenous fertility to explain why population growth and economic growth can be negatively correlated after an economy develops to a certain level. Secondly, it indicates that economic development leads to a simultaneous increase in divorce rates and decrease in fertility rates. Received: 05 February 1999/Accepted: 20 December 1999     

俄罗斯人口发展状况及对中国的启示

本文利用俄罗斯的历史人口数据,对俄罗斯人口数量和结构变动状况进行了分析,并对俄罗斯三次人口转型中的社会经济情况变化对人口变动状况的影响进行了分析。结果表明,俄罗斯的人口出生率下降很快,人口死亡率升高,总和生育率已远低于替代水平,因此人口自然增长率迅速下降,总人口数长期处于下降通道,出生预期寿命不增反降,特别是男性出生预期寿命远低于女性出生预期寿命。在推动人口增长的社会经济相关措施实施后,俄罗斯人口数量仍不能增加,这对目前总和生育率已经很低的中国有一定的借鉴意义。     

Fertility and economic dependency of Soviet women

The study addresses itself to the question: If it can be shown that economic dependency of women is not associated with fertility, then what are the variables that favor their abstention from work outside home? Results based on an extensive statistical analysis of Soviet data bring into focus new evidence. It was found thateconomic dependency of women is associated with themarriage differential between sexes. This relationship is especially evident in the regions where birth rates are of a low order. In the geographic areas where fertility is high, the percentage of economically inactive women increases with an increase in the urban population portion in an administrative area. Five principal components of urbanization have been identified: (1) educational level, (2) increasing rates of marriage, (3) divorce, (4) equal educational status of women as compared with men, and (5) the rising proportion of economically dependent women in the 16–54 age span. Most of the data are based on the 1959 Census and vital statistics by administrative areas for the U. S. S. R. For analytic purposes these were sorted into 30 areas of low birth rates, 62 areas with moderate rates, and 48 administrative areas corresponding to the high-fertility region in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and in several autonomous non-Slav republics.     

Total fertility rate,women's education,and women's work: What are the relationships?

This paper presents the results of a statistical study, using cross-national data, on the relationships between total fertility rate and women's level of education and women's labor participation. Aggregate data on seventy-one countries were collected from numerous sources. Eight variables related to women's fertility, mortality, economic status, labor participation, and education are analyzed using multivariate linear regression analyses. Two models are considered. The first model regresses five variables on total fertility rate: per capita Cross National Product (GNP), percentage of women ages 15 to 19 who are married, female life expectancy at birth, calories available as a percentage of need, and percentage of married couples using contraception. The second model includes two additional regressors: the average number of years of schooling for women, and the percentage of women in the labor force. These seven variables are regressed on total fertility rate. Although the data are crude, the results of the analyses suggest that the model which incorporates women's level of education and women's labor participation captures the data better than the smaller model. The full model suggests that the percentage of women in the labor force is directly related to total fertility rate, whereas the average number of years of education for women is indirectly related to total fertility rate.     

Economic Development,Gender Inequality,and Demographic Outcomes: Evidence from India

This article examines the determinants of fertility, child mortality, and female disadvantage in child survival in India, using a district‐level panel data set linking 1981 and 1991 censuses. The results question the dominant view that variables directly related to women's agency (specifically, the female literacy rate and the female labor force participation rate) have played the crucial roles here. Instead, variables reflecting the general level of development and modernization are shown to have had the greatest effect in reducing fertility and child mortality during the period of the study. Both economic development and women's agency are seen to have had significant effects in reducing the female disadvantage in child survival. The results suggest, however, that with continued economic development, the two women's agency variables lose their significance in influencing this disadvantage. The policy implications of these findings are considered.     

The effects of income level,income distribution,education and urbanization on fertility rates among 28 administrative regions of China

Conflicting empirical evidence on the role of income distribution on fertility rates is the impetus for this 1982 study of providence-specific Chinese Census data, excluding Tibet. The findings support the prior thesis of Repetto but utilize the micromethods and per household income measures of the competing findings of Boulier. It is cautioned that in the Chinese analysis equal income distribution depresses fertility, but China may not reflect world wide patterns. China did not have until recently a market incentive system, and there are income measurement problems. The data are per capita economic output not per capita income, and those high output areas which did not produce low fertility may actually have had households with low incomes. The importance of this research is in establishing that cross-province data are a useful tool in understanding the influence of income distribution on fertility. As with most developing countries, women's education, for instance, at least junior high education explained the largest variation of fertility differences among the 28 provinces. The urbanization variable when controlling for income was positive, unlike the other developing countries. The 1949 Chinese government's spatial industrial policy encouraged urbanization and industrialization in rural areas and family planning programs such that highly urbanized provinces have low population density. A variety of variables on income level, income distribution, education, and urbanization are discussed. OLSQ regressions were generated utilizing such independent variables as output per capita in yuan (YOUTHPC80), the square of YOUTHPC80 (YOUTHPC802), YOUTHPC80 multiplied by the average family size in each province (YOUTHPH80), and the squared value of YOUTHPH80.     

Tribal affiliation and fertility: A note

This not extends T. L. F. Devis's recent investigation of the relationship between tribal affiliation and fertility in Sierra Leone. Controls are introduced for age structure and economic variables. The findings suggest that tribal affiliation does not have much independent influence on fertility after these factors are allowed for.