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Fertility Transition (fertility + transition)
Selected AbstractsMapping the Timing, Pace, and Scale of the Fertility Transition in BrazilPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 2 2010Joseph E. Potter Between 1960 and 2000, fertility fell sharply in Brazil, but this transition was unevenly distributed in space and time. Using Bayesian spatial statistical methods and microdata from five censuses, we develop and apply a procedure for fitting logistic curves to the fertility transitions in more than 500 small regions of Brazil over this 40-year period. Doing so enables us to map the main features of the Brazilian fertility transition in considerable detail. We detect early declines in some regions of the country and document large differences between early and late transitions in regard to both the initial level of fertility and the speed of the transition. We also use our results to test hypotheses regarding changes in the level of development at the onset of the fertility transition and identify a temporary stall in the Brazilian transition that occurred in the late 1990s. A web site with project details is at http://schmert.net/BayesLogistic. [source] Contradictions in Nigeria's Fertility Transition: The Burdens and Benefits of Having PeoplePOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 2 2004Daniel Jordan Smith Nigeria appears to be experiencing a transition to lower fertility. Based on ethnographic research, this article shows how Nigerians navigate a paradoxical political-economic and cultural context, wherein they face powerful pressures both to limit their fertility and to have relatively large families. The main argument advanced here is that Nigerians' fertility behavior must be understood in the context of the ways that parenthood, children, family, and kinship are inextricably intertwined with how people survive in a political economy organized around patron-clientism. Despite the fact that fertility transition is widely associated with broad processes of modernization and development, ordinary Nigerians experience the pressures to limit fertility in terms of a failed economy, development disappointments, and personal hardship,even while they see relatively smaller families as essential if they are to educate their children properly and adapt to a changing society. [source] The End of the Fertility Transition in the Developed WorldPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 3 2002John Bongaarts By the late 1990s the average period total fertility rate in the developed world had declined to 1.6, a level substantially lower than projected in the 1970s and 1980s. This article examines recent trends and patterns in fertility in the developed world with particular emphasis on the effects and implications of changes in the timing of childbearing. The main objective is to demonstrate that while fertility in these countries is indeed low, women's childbearing levels are not as low as period measures such as the total fertility rate suggest. To obtain a full understanding of the various dimensions of fertility change. several indicators are examined, including period and cohort fertility by birth order and childbearing preferences. An analysis of these indicators demonstrates that period fertility measures in many developed countries are temporarily depressed by a rise in the mean age at childbearing. The distortion of the TFR is as great as 0.4 births per woman in Italy and Spain. These effects have been present in many developed countries since the 1970s and could continue for years into the future. But tempo effects are temporary, and once the postponement of childbearing ends,as it eventually must,the corresponding fertility-depressing effect stops, thus putting upward pressure on period fertility. Countries with very low fertility and substantial tempo effects may well experience rises in fertility in the near future if the timing of childbearing stabilizes. Even if this happens, however, it seems unlikely that fertility will rebound to the replacement level. [source] Spatial Patterns of Fertility Transition in Indian DistrictsPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 4 2001Christophe Z. Guilmoto The article explores the dynamics of Indian fertility at the district level using a child-woman index developed from the four Indian censuses, 1961 to 1991. It employs statistical and geostatistical techniques to assess fertility change across districts and periods. Fertility decline is evident in every region, but sizable regional differentials exist. A cluster analysis of fertility profiles indicates that a clear spatial pattern of fertility in India has emerged and the pattern intensified because of the process of fertility decline. [source] Relative Cohort Size: Source of a Unifying Theory of Global Fertility Transition?POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 2 2000Diane J. Macunovich Using United Nations estimates of age structure and vital rates for 184 countries at five-year intervals from 1950 through 1995, this article demonstrates how changes in relative cohort size appear to have affected patterns of fertility across countries since 1950,not just in developed countries, but perhaps even more importantly in developing countries as they pass through the demographic transition. The increase in relative cohort size (defined as the proportion of males aged 15,24 relative to males aged 25,59), which occurs as a result of declining mortality rates among infants, children, and young adults during the demographic transition, appears to act as the mechanism that determines when the fertility portion of the transition begins. As hypothesized by Richard Easterlin, the increasing proportion of young adults generates a downward pressure on young men's relative wages (or on the size of landhold-ings passed on from parent to child), which in turn causes young adults to accept a tradeoff between family size and material wellbeing, setting in motion a "cascade" or "snowball" effect in which total fertility rates tumble as social norms regarding acceptable family sizes begin to change. [source] Fertility transition in Ghana: looking back and looking forwardPOPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 6 2006Samuel Agyei-Mensah Abstract It is widely accepted that while the fertility transition is underway in sub-Saharan Africa, the pattern of change differs widely in both time and space. This paper examines the case of Ghana, regarded as the vanguard in the West African fertility transition. Based largely on analyses of Demographic and Health Survey data as well as localised studies, significant patterns emerge. One puzzling finding is that the increase in modern contraception usage has not kept pace with the declines in fertility. The paper suggests that this mismatch can be explained either by an increase in induced abortions, reduced exposure to sexual relations (perhaps due to HIV), or misreporting of contraceptive use. The paper also highlights the considerable geographical diversity in the ongoing fertility transition. The Northern region is still in the pre-transition stage, with little decline in fertility to date. In contrast, the pace of decline has been very rapid in the Greater Accra region. The factors underlying these patterns and the future trajectory of the fertility transition are discussed. It is argued that the fertility transition may be more leisurely in the near future than in the recent past. Among the factors working against future fertility decline are the stability in the infant mortality rate, the stall in fertility desires, and the low patronage of modern contraceptives especially in rural areas. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Testing three evolutionary models of the demographic transition: Patterns of fertility and age at marriage in urban South IndiaAMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 4 2009Mary K. Shenk Over the last three decades many authors have addressed the demographic transition from the perspective of evolutionary theory. Some authors have emphasized parental investment factors such as the costs of raising children, others have emphasized the effects of mortality and other forms of risk, and others have emphasized the biased transmission of cultural norms from people of high status. Yet the literature says little about the relative strengths of each of these types of motivations or about which ones are more likely to serve as the primary impetus for large-scale demographic change. In this paper, I examine how each of these factors has influenced the demographic transition in urban South India during the course of the 20th century using two measures of fertility transition: number of surviving children and age at marriage. I find that investment-related, risk-related, and cultural transmission predictors all have significant individual effects on the outcome variables, which persist when they are entered in combination. When the three types of predictors are compared, however, investment-related models appear to provide more robust explanations for patterns in both fertility and age of marriage. Am. J. Hum. Biol., 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Mapping the Timing, Pace, and Scale of the Fertility Transition in BrazilPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 2 2010Joseph E. Potter Between 1960 and 2000, fertility fell sharply in Brazil, but this transition was unevenly distributed in space and time. Using Bayesian spatial statistical methods and microdata from five censuses, we develop and apply a procedure for fitting logistic curves to the fertility transitions in more than 500 small regions of Brazil over this 40-year period. Doing so enables us to map the main features of the Brazilian fertility transition in considerable detail. We detect early declines in some regions of the country and document large differences between early and late transitions in regard to both the initial level of fertility and the speed of the transition. We also use our results to test hypotheses regarding changes in the level of development at the onset of the fertility transition and identify a temporary stall in the Brazilian transition that occurred in the late 1990s. A web site with project details is at http://schmert.net/BayesLogistic. [source] On Postponement and Birth IntervalsPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 3 2008Ian M. Timæus Much of the literature on fertility transition presumes that birth control is practiced either to limit family size or to space births. This article argues that women also use birth control to postpone pregnancy. Postponement is not synonymous with spacing. It arises when women delay their next birth for indefinite periods for reasons unrelated to the age of their youngest child, but without deciding not to have any more children. Postponement has a distinctive impact on the shape of birth-interval distributions that differs from the impacts of family size limitation, birth spacing, or a mixture of the two behaviors. Some populations, such as that in South Africa, have developed fertility regimes characterized by birth intervals far longer than can be accounted for by birth spacing. Postponement of further childbearing that eventually becomes permanent may be an important driver of the transition to lower fertility in sub-Saharan Africa. [source] Contradictions in Nigeria's Fertility Transition: The Burdens and Benefits of Having PeoplePOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 2 2004Daniel Jordan Smith Nigeria appears to be experiencing a transition to lower fertility. Based on ethnographic research, this article shows how Nigerians navigate a paradoxical political-economic and cultural context, wherein they face powerful pressures both to limit their fertility and to have relatively large families. The main argument advanced here is that Nigerians' fertility behavior must be understood in the context of the ways that parenthood, children, family, and kinship are inextricably intertwined with how people survive in a political economy organized around patron-clientism. Despite the fact that fertility transition is widely associated with broad processes of modernization and development, ordinary Nigerians experience the pressures to limit fertility in terms of a failed economy, development disappointments, and personal hardship,even while they see relatively smaller families as essential if they are to educate their children properly and adapt to a changing society. [source] Reassessing the Insurance Effect: A Qualitative Analysis of Fertility Behavior in Senegal and ZimbabwePOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 3 2003Thomas LeGrand 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. [source] On the Modernity of Traditional Contraception: Time and the Social Context of FertilityPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 2 2002Jennifer Johnson-Hanks Many studies of fertility implicitly equate temporal management, biomedical contraception, and "modernity" on the one hand, and "tradition," the lack of intentional timing, and uncontrolled fertility on the other. This article questions that equation, focusing on the widespread use of periodic abstinence in southern Cameroon. Drawing on field data and the Cameroon Demographic and Health Survey, the article investigates how local concepts of timing shape both contraceptive choice and the evaluation of methods as "modern" or "traditional." Cameroonian women prefer periodic abstinence because they perceive it as "modern," a modernity tied both to the social context in which it is taught and to its unique temporal form. By contrast, Depo-Provera, pills, and the IUD are seen as less-than-modern, because they are less exigent of temporal control. The reliance on a behavioral, rather than technological, contraceptive method parallels the experience of the European fertility transition. Cameroonian women draw on a complex social repertoire in making contraceptive choices; methods are preferred or rejected not only on the basis of their efficacy in averting pregnancy, but also because of their correspondence to models of legitimate social action. Reproductive practices may have social motivations that are unrelated to fertility per se. [source] The Spread of Primary Schooling in sub-Saharan Africa: Implications for Fertility ChangePOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 3 2000Cynthia B. Lloyd In 1980 Caldwell hypothesized that the time of the onset of the fertility transition in developing countries would be linked with the achievement of "mass formal schooling." This article applies Demographic and Health Survey data to assess schooling patterns and trends for 23 sub-Saharan African countries, using the percentage of 15,19-year olds who have completed at least four years of schooling as an indicator of progress in education. As background to that assessment, the article includes a review of the sparse literature on the links between children's schooling and fertility decline. The analysis strongly supports Caldwell's hypothesis with empirical evidence of the much stronger negative relationship between fertility decline and grade 4 attainment in those countries that have attained mass-schooling levels than in those that have not yet achieved such levels. [source] Fertility transition in Ghana: looking back and looking forwardPOPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 6 2006Samuel Agyei-Mensah Abstract It is widely accepted that while the fertility transition is underway in sub-Saharan Africa, the pattern of change differs widely in both time and space. This paper examines the case of Ghana, regarded as the vanguard in the West African fertility transition. Based largely on analyses of Demographic and Health Survey data as well as localised studies, significant patterns emerge. One puzzling finding is that the increase in modern contraception usage has not kept pace with the declines in fertility. The paper suggests that this mismatch can be explained either by an increase in induced abortions, reduced exposure to sexual relations (perhaps due to HIV), or misreporting of contraceptive use. The paper also highlights the considerable geographical diversity in the ongoing fertility transition. The Northern region is still in the pre-transition stage, with little decline in fertility to date. In contrast, the pace of decline has been very rapid in the Greater Accra region. The factors underlying these patterns and the future trajectory of the fertility transition are discussed. It is argued that the fertility transition may be more leisurely in the near future than in the recent past. Among the factors working against future fertility decline are the stability in the infant mortality rate, the stall in fertility desires, and the low patronage of modern contraceptives especially in rural areas. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Determinants of Female Fertility in Taiwan, 1966,2001: Empirical Evidence from Cointegration and Variance Decomposition Analysis,ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 4 2006Paresh Kumar Narayan J13; C22; C52 This study investigates the determinants of the fertility rate in Taiwan over the period 1966,2001. Consistent with theory, the key explanatory variables in Taiwan's fertility model are real income, infant mortality rate, female education and female labor force participation rate. The test for cointegration is based on the recently developed bounds testing procedure while the long-run and short-run elasticities are based on the autoregressive distributed lag model. Among our key results, female education and female labor force participation rate are found to be the key determinants of fertility in Taiwan in the long run. The variance decom-position analysis indicates that in the long run approximately 45percent of the variation in fertility is explained by the combined impact of female labor force participation, mortality and income, implying that socioeconomic development played an important role in the fertility transition in Taiwan. This result is consistent with the traditional structural hypothesis. [source] Mapping the Timing, Pace, and Scale of the Fertility Transition in BrazilPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 2 2010Joseph E. Potter Between 1960 and 2000, fertility fell sharply in Brazil, but this transition was unevenly distributed in space and time. Using Bayesian spatial statistical methods and microdata from five censuses, we develop and apply a procedure for fitting logistic curves to the fertility transitions in more than 500 small regions of Brazil over this 40-year period. Doing so enables us to map the main features of the Brazilian fertility transition in considerable detail. We detect early declines in some regions of the country and document large differences between early and late transitions in regard to both the initial level of fertility and the speed of the transition. We also use our results to test hypotheses regarding changes in the level of development at the onset of the fertility transition and identify a temporary stall in the Brazilian transition that occurred in the late 1990s. A web site with project details is at http://schmert.net/BayesLogistic. [source] Institutions and Development: A Conceptual ReanalysisPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 2 2006Alejandro Portes This essay reviews the concept of "institutions" as used in the recent economic literatures on firms and national development and notes its limitations. An alternative framework is proposed that draws on classic and contemporary sociological theory to position the concept of institutions in relation to other basic elements of culture and social structure. The framework is used to analyze (1) the failure of attempts to transplant institutions of developed countries into the global South and (2) the dynamics of massive privatization in Mexico. The bearing of this framework on current institutional theories of social change is examined, leading to the identification of sources of change at different levels of causal significance and scope. This modified theory of change is applied to the longstanding demographic debates on historical and institutional determinants of fertility transitions. The bearing of the proposed "thick institutionalist" framework on social theory and future development policies is discussed. [source] | |||||||||||||