Socio-economic determinants of fertility in some countries of Asia.

Abstract

An attempt is made in this analysis to determine the individual contribution of 6 factors--health variables, educational variables, variables showing status of women, economic variables, modernization variables, and family planning program performance variables--in determining the level of fertility on the basis of available data for 13 Asian countries. Path analysis and stepwise regression analysis were used. The pattern of the interrelationship between different categories of the variables which are affecting fertility and family planning performance are schematically represented in a chart. The model assumes that socioeconomic development of a country is a precondition for further mortality and fertility decline. The application of the model to any empirical situation calls for the determination of the indicators of the output variable (fertility) and other explanatory factors such as socioeconomic development, modernization, and health variables. For this study only 13 developing countries with 11 variables that are highly correlated with the fertility variables for the year 1975 were selected. 2 measures of fertility, i.e., total fertility rate (TFR) and crude birthrate (CBR) were taken for the purpose of the analysis and are denoted by Xo. The important background variables linked to fertility decline were literacy, urbanization, gross national product (GNP) per capita, and economically active female population in that order. Infant mortality and family planning were the most proximate variables to fertility. One of the reasons that fertility levels varied among the countries was that most of the countries have not as yet crossed the lower limits of the threshold zones with respect to most of the indicators. Except for 3 or 4 of the countries, none of the countries had entered the threshold zone for all the indicators. Particularly countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan were far below the lower limit of threshold zone in respect to all of the indicators, and in these countries the fertility declines were very low. Countries like Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore had already crossed the threshold zones for almost all of the indicators, and there has been a rapid decline in fertility in these countries. Countries like Sri Lanka and the Philippines have entered the threshold zone only for some of the indicators and hence experienced only moderate fertility decline. As the data used for the analysis are of limited reliability, the findings should be taken only as tentative.