Gender egalitarianism,perceived economic insecurity,and fertility intentions in Spain: A qualitative analysis

Economic uncertainty contributes to low fertility in many European countries. On the other hand, greater gender equality may positively influence fertility. This paper examines how these two forces interact in Spain. We use in-depth interviews to analyse fertility decision-making among young and highly educated partnered adults living in urban areas. Highly gender-egalitarian interviewees are less likely to perceive economic insecurity as an obstacle to proceeding to a next birth than less egalitarian interviewees. But there is not necessarily a difference in these two groups’ overall fertility intentions, as highly egalitarian interviewees’ greater valuation of stable employment for both partners requires institutional and policy support for dual-earner couples’ childrearing. When we look only at interviewees who express economic insecurity, somewhat higher fertility intentions are expressed by those holding less gender-egalitarian attitudes. Our results underline the complexity of the interrelationships between economic insecurity, gender egalitarianism, and fertility intentions.     

中国生育率研究方法:30年回眸

改革开放30年是我国人口学及人口研究迅速成长的30年。生育率研究方法从一个侧面反映出改革开放以来我国人口学研究方法的发展。中国的生育率研究方法既有从西方引进的各种生育率指标和模型,也有中国学者为了适应自己的需要而改进和创建的方法和模型。笔者从生育率度量指标和生育率模型两个方面总结我国生育率研究方法的应用及变化。对在中国生育率研究中所使用的主要方法进行回顾并对这些方法对我国生育率研究的贡献进行总结。     

甘肃省居民生育意愿与生育目的的调查研究

文章利用2007年调查数据,分析研究了甘肃省居民的生育意愿和生育目的。调查发现．随着经济的发展和社会的进步,甘肃省居民的意愿生育数量不断减少,已经略低于更替生育水平,男孩偏好的意愿生育性别倾向仍然广泛存在,期望生育一儿一女是大部分甘肃居民最为普遍的愿望,意愿妇女初育年龄不断推迟．生育目的呈现出多元化趋势,但养老送终、传宗接代仍是目前最重要的生育目的。     

基于调研数据的总和生育率发展趋势及影响因素分析——来自湖北鄂州、黄石、仙桃的调查数据

文章基于5490份有效问卷的调查数据对湖北省总和生育率（TFR）进行分析。结论表明,自1985年以来年龄别生育率下降主要原因是计生政策严格控制生育数量,而非生育行为的推迟。TFR呈现先快速下降后缓慢上升的趋势,其变化与高生育水平育龄妇女占比无关。与政策生育率变化有关。通过对湖北省总出生人数进行估算和分析,结论表明1985—2008年总和生育率对总出生人数的影响程度要大于高生育水平育龄妇女占比的影响;外推预测表明2009～2014年出生人数趋势稳定,2015年以后呈下降趋势。利用Logit模型对实际生育水平的影响因素进行分析,发现有显著影响的因素为：受访者文化程度、户口性质、出生年代、工作状态、丈夫工作状态、放宽的计生政策和奖励少生的计生政策。     

Modelling period fertility: Schooling and intervals following a birth in Eastern Africa

We describe a regression-based approach to the modelling of age-, order-, and duration-specific period fertility, using retrospective survey data. The approach produces results that are free of selection biases and can be used to study differential fertility. It is applied to Demographic and Health Survey data for Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe to investigate differential trends in fertility by education. Parity progression fell and the intervals following each birth lengthened between the 1970s and 2000s in all four countries. Fertility fell most among women with secondary education. In contrast to other world regions, postponement of successive births for extended periods accounted for much of the initial drop in fertility in these African countries. However, family size limitation by women with secondary education in Ethiopia and Kenya and longer birth spacing in Zimbabwe also played significant roles. Thus, birth control is being adopted in Eastern Africa in response to diverse changes in fertility preferences.     

New evidence about effects of reproductive variables on child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa

There is still considerable uncertainty about how reproductive factors affect child mortality. This study, based on Demographic and Health Survey data from 28 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, shows that mortality is highest for firstborn children with very young mothers. Other children with young mothers, or of high birth order, also experience high mortality. Net of maternal age and birth order, a short preceding birth interval is associated with above average mortality. These patterns change, however, if time-invariant unobserved mother-level characteristics of importance for both mortality and fertility are controlled for in a multilevel–multiprocess model. Most importantly, there are smaller advantages associated with longer birth intervals and being older at first birth. The implications of alternative reproductive ‘strategies’ are discussed, taking into account that if the mother is older at birth, the child will also be born in a later calendar year, when mortality may be lower.     

Women's Marriage Behavior Following a Premarital Birth in Sub‐Saharan Africa

This study examines the relationship between premarital childbearing and the timing of women's entry into their first marriage in sub‐Saharan Africa. The study shows that African women who have a premarital birth generally experience later transitions to marriage than do their childless peers. Although the birth of a child precipitates a quicker transition to marriage initially, unmarried mothers, on average, marry at older ages than their childless peers and remain single for between 2 and 14 years. Evidence from a subsample of countries confirms that the time between having a child and first marriage has lengthened slightly in some countries; however, this reflects mainly the overall trend toward later marriage, rather than a further bifurcation of the marital trajectories of mothers versus childless women. The study raises policy concerns about the welfare of Africa's single mothers and their children.     

Conceptualizing Childbearing Ambivalence: A Social and Dynamic Perspective

Childbearing ambivalence is often conceptualized as a state of conflicting desires about having a child that is characteristic of particular individuals or life stages. This study proposes that childbearing ambivalence is dynamic and situational, resulting from the multiple sociocultural frames surrounding childbearing. Using eight waves of prospective data from a population‐based sample of young adults in Malawi, results show that 41% of women and 48% of men are ambivalent about childbearing at some point in the 2.5‐year study. There is limited evidence that ambivalence is related to individual sociodemographic or psychosocial characteristics aside from gender; rather, ambivalence is tied to life course markers such as school enrollment and age. In addition, life course transitions and changes in relationships, health, and economic factors are associated with the onset of ambivalence, supporting the theory that ambivalence is a dynamic state that men and women frequently pass through as their lives and circumstances change.     

The limited effect of increasing educational attainment on childlessness trends in twentieth-century Europe,women born 1916–65

During the twentieth century, trends in childlessness varied strongly across European countries while educational attainment grew continuously across them. Using census and large-scale survey data from 13 European countries, we investigated the relationship between these two factors among women born between 1916 and 1965. Up to the 1940 birth cohort, the share of women childless at age 40+ decreased universally. Afterwards, the trends diverged across countries. The results suggest that the overall trends were related mainly to changing rates of childlessness within educational groups and only marginally to changes in the educational composition of the population. Over time, childlessness levels of the medium-educated and high-educated became closer to those of the low-educated, but the difference in level between the two better educated groups remained stable in Western and Southern Europe and increased slightly in the East.     

A lost family-planning regime in eighteenth-century Ceylon

Based on Dutch colonial registers (thombos), this paper reconstructs fertility for two districts in Ceylon, 1756–68. It overcomes challenges in data quality by establishing the outer bounds of plausible estimates in a series of scenarios. Among these, total fertility rates (TFRs) averaged 5.5 in one district, but only 2.7 in the other. These figures exclude the victims of infanticide, a custom noted in European travelogues between about 1660 and 1820. Sex ratios among children differed depending on the number of older siblings, and overall, 27?per cent of girls are missing in one district and 57?per cent in the other. There was little significant variation either in the TFR or the sex ratio by socio-economic status, suggesting that poverty was not a key factor in motivating infanticides. Instead, we argue that at least parts of Ceylon had a forward-looking culture of family planning in the eighteenth century, which was lost in subsequent decades.