Completed Fertility Research Articles

China's Below‐Replacement Fertility: Recent Trends and Future Prospects

Between 1970 and 1990, China experiencoed a rapid and sharp fertility decline—from total fertility rates of approximately six births to two. The degree to which Chinese fertility has continued to fall after 1990 is controversial. We use survey data from the 1997 National Population and Reproductive Health Survey and from the 2001 Reproductive Health and Family Planning Survey to document recent trends in Chinese fertility. Our estimates provide further evidence that China's fertility is well below‐replacement level at the turn of the twenty‐first century—with TFR levels of approximately 1.5 children per woman. Trends in parity‐specific cohort fertility by age also suggest below replacement completed fertility for cohorts still in the childbearing years. In the article's second section, we identify key components of low period fertility in order to frame our discussion of two questions: 1) in what ways is Chinese low fertility different from/similar to that in other low‐fertility countries? And 2) what are the likely future trends in Chinese fertility?

Fertility Decline in Paraguay

Recent reproductive health surveys show that the fertility rate in Paraguay decreased precipitously from 4.3 lifetime births per woman in 1995-98 to 2.9 births in 2001-04. In this study, we establish data consistency between the 1998 and 2004 surveys by comparing a series of cohort-specific period rates and use the Bongaarts framework of proximate determinants of fertility to demonstrate that an increase in the contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) between 1998 and 2004 fully accounts for the fertility decline. Decomposition of rates shows that changes in group-specific CPRs explain a greater proportion of the change in the overall CPR than do changes in population composition by educational attainment, urban residence, region, and language spoken at home. Finally, we show that younger cohorts of women in 2004 reported ideal completed fertility desires of less than 2.9 births, suggesting that the fertility rate is likely to continue to decrease.

The Fertility of Second-Generation Political Immigrants in Taiwan

In contrast to the results in Mayer and Riphahn (2000) where no distinction is made between the causes of economic as well as political immigrants, this article shows that compared to native Taiwanese, the parental refugee experience results in a lower completed fertility of the children's family partly through inducing a higher female labor force participation (FLFP) of the second-generation immigrant family. In addition, the likelihood of a wife participating in the market sector increases with the number of political immigrant parents and in-laws, supporting the psychological conjecture generated from Borjas (1982) and Brenner and Kiefer (1981) in which completed fertility falls with the refugee experience shared with a couple's parents and in-laws.

Intergenerational Transmission of Fertility Patterns*

AbstractRecent studies by economists have focused on cultural transmission from the origin country rather than the origin family. Our paper extends this research by investigating how family‐specific‘cultural transmission’ can affect fertility rates. Following Machado and Santos Silva [Journal of the American Statistical Association (2005) Vol. 100, p. 1226] and Miranda [Journal of Population Economics (2008) Vol. 21, p. 67], we estimate count data quantile regression models using the British Household Panel Survey. We find that a woman's origin‐family size is positively associated with completed fertility in her destination family. A woman's country of birth also matters for her fertility. For a sub‐sample of continuously partnered men and women, both partners’ origin‐family sizes significantly affect destination‐family fertility.

Are Children "Normal"?

We examine Becker's (1960) contention that children are "normal." For the cross section of non-Hispanic white married couples in the U.S., we show that when we restrict comparisons to similarly-educated women living in similarly-expensive locations, completed fertility is positively correlated with the husband's income. The empirical evidence is consistent with children being "normal." In an effort to show causal effects, we analyze the localized impact on fertility of the mid-1970s increase in world energy prices - an exogenous shock that substantially increased men's incomes in the Appalachian coal-mining region. Empirical evidence for that population indicates that fertility increases in men's income.

Changing Relationships between Education and Fertility: A Study of Women and Men Born 1940 to 1964

Education and fertility (including childrearing) are foundational processes in societal metabolism, and the relationship between them can have profound, long-term effects on a variety of institutions, including the labor market, the family (especially care for the elderly), and educational institutions themselves. In postindustrial countries, conventional wisdom holds that there is a strong inverse relationship between education and completed fertility, but this has not been carefully examined in recent decades, and the topic has been almost completely neglected for men. In this article, we address these core questions and relations, drawing on the Norwegian population registers for cohorts born 1940 to 1964. Among women, the relationship between completed fertility and educational level attained at age 39 has become substantially less negative. In all cohorts, better-educated women have later first births and remain childless more often than do the less educated. The negative effect of education on higher-order birth rates net of the impact of later motherhood has, however, disappeared. Family-friendly ideologies and policies, including better access to high-quality daycare, are likely the engine behind this shift. Among men, a positive relationship has emerged: the better educated become fathers later than others, but fewer remain childless, and there has been an increasingly stimulating effect of education on second- and third-birth rates. We discuss these sex differences in light of the persistent differences between mothers' and fathers' roles.

Do higher rents discourage fertility? Evidence from U.S. cities, 1940–2000

This paper documents the existence of a negative cross-sectional correlation between the price of living space as measured by rent per room and fertility using U.S. Census data over the period 1940–2000, the effect strengthening from 1940 to 1970 and weakening thereafter. The negative correlation does not merely reflect the tendency of larger families to locate within less-expensive areas of a given metropolitan area. Our study focuses on younger households, but analysis of completed fertility among older households reinforces the findings for younger households. Estimates for 36 CMSAs using the American Housing Survey, which permit us to construct persquare-foot measures of the price of living space, indicate that our findings are not merely an artifact of larger families occupying houses with more rooms. Durbin-Wu-Hausman tests reveal little evidence of endogeneity bias.

The Contribution of Assisted Reproduction to Completed Fertility: An Analysis of Danish Data

Assisted reproduction has a minor but increasing influence on childbearing trends in advanced societies. In Denmark, the use of assisted reproduction technology (ART) has become particularly widespread. At the same time, Danish women born in the late 1950s and the 1960s experienced stabilization or even a slight increase in their mean number of children. Broad availability and widespread use of assisted reproduction may become important factors contributing to maintaining relatively high completed fertility among the younger cohorts of Danish women. To explore this idea, we analyze and project cohort trends in fertility rates among native Danish women born in 1960‐78 and examine the likely contribution of assisted reproduction to these trends. The projected proportion of children born after ART treatment shows a substantial increase from 2.1 percent among women born in 1965 to 4‐5 percent among women born in 1978, with an estimated net impact of ART (as compared with the hypothetical situation where no ART treatment was available) on the order of 3‐4 percent. When intrauterine inseminations are included, this implies that up to 7 percent of children of those native Danish women born in 1975 and later will likely be conceived by infertility treatment.

Fertility and mortality patterns of captive Bornean and Sumatran orangutans: is there a species difference in life history?

Across broad taxonomic groups, life history models predict that increased ecological predictability will lead to conservative investment in reproductive effort. Within species, however, organisms are predicted to have increased reproductive rates under improved environmental conditions. It is not clear how these models apply to closely-related species. In this paper, we examine predictions from these models as applied to variability in reproductive rates between the two species of orangutans, Pongo pygmaeus (Bornean) and Pongo abelii (Sumatran). Orangutans exhibit characteristics of a “slow” life history strategy with large bodies, late age at maturity, low reproductive rates, and long lifespan. Recently, researchers proposed that Sumatran orangutans may have an even slower life history than Bornean orangutans as a result of ecological and genetic differences (Wich et al., 2004). We examined this hypothesis by studying important aspects of life history of both species under conditions of relative ecological stability, in captivity. In this large dataset, there were no significant species differences in age of first or last reproduction, completed fertility, perinatal and postnatal mortality, or female longevity. Bornean orangutans in captivity did have significantly longer interbirth intervals, and male Bornean orangutans had higher survival past maturity. Our results do not support the hypothesis that selection has led to decreased reproductive effort under conditions of increased habitat quality in Sumatra (Wich et al., 2004), and instead suggest that phenotypic flexibility may be particularly important in explaining differences between closely related species.

The impact of family policies on fertility in industrialized countries: a review of the literature

This paper examines the theoretical propositions and empirical evidence linking policies and fertility. More specifically, the analysis presented in this paper draws attention to the complex mechanisms that theoretically link policies and demographic outcomes: mechanisms that involve imperfect information and decisions that are rationally bound by very specific circumstances. As to the empirical evidence, studies provide mixed conclusions as to the effect of policies on fertility. While a small positive effect of policies on fertility is found in numerous studies, no statistically significant effect is found in others. Moreover, some studies suggest that the effect of policies tends to be on the timing of births rather than on completed fertility.

Selection Intensity Among Khonds of Andhra Pradesh

The index of opportunity of selection among Khonds is computed on the basis of reproductive history of mothers with completed fertility career and the results were compared with the available data on other tribal populations of Andhra Pradesh. The index of selection intensity (I) among Khonds is observed to be similar to the condition in Sugalis of Andhra Pradesh. Selection Intensity among Khonds is found to be lower when compared with Raj Gond Pardhan Hill Kolam Manne Kolam Chenchu and Yanadi tribes of Andhra Pradesh. This could be attributed to the availability of health care facility better nutrition and socio-economic conditions and biogenetic factors considering the size of the population. The state of demographic dynamics reveals that the Khond is passing through better demographic transition. (authors)

The institutionalization and pace of fertility in American stepfamilies

This paper compares nonparametric rates for American women in stepfamilies and intact families using data from the June 1995 Current Population Survey. Results show that childbearing behaviors in stepfamilies resemble those in intact families. Regardless of stepfamily status timings and levels of for second and third marital births are identical for all women at the same lifetime parity. Fertility patterns are also similar for all first marital births with the exception of a constant three-year difference in the pace of and a fertility penalty for stepfamily women. These findings are consistent with (1) the institutionalization hypothesis of stepfamily processes; (2) the hypothesis that lifetime parity is the primary determinant of female fertility; and (3) a speculation that women in stepfamilies attempt to catch up on lost outside of marriage. These findings also imply that increasing prevalence of stepfamilies will not lead to increased completed fertility. (authors)

The Effect of Labor‐Saving Technology on Longitudinal Fertility Changes

In many subsistence communities worldwide, laborsaving technologies such as mechanized water pumps and grain mills are introduced during the first stages of economic acculturation. These technological changes affect the efficiency with which resources are acquired and processed. If women can produce the same amount of a good in less time and if the time savings is reallocated to less energetically costly activities, the positive shift in womens energy balance can affect fertility in a number of ways. Reproductive histories collected over the past ten years show that since the introduction of laborsaving technology Xculoc Maya women begin childbearing at a significantly younger age and have a greater annual probability of giving birth and higher agespecific and completed fertility. Access to wage labor, education, and the market economy remains limited. When a change in labor efficiency takes place under these conditions, parents appear to reallocate the saved time to reproduction rather to production. Such conditions may have significant implications for the rapid population growth occurring in many smallscale societies during the early stage of economic acculturation.

Does family policy affect fertility?

From the mid-1960s to around 1980, Sweden extended its family policies that provide financial and in-kind support to families with children very quickly. The benefits were closely tied to previous work experience. Thus, women born in the 1950s faced markedly different incentives when making fertility choices compared to women born only 15–20 years earlier. This paper examines the evolution of completed fertility patterns for Swedish women born in 1925–1958 and makes comparisons to women in neighbouring countries where the policies were not extended as much as in Sweden. The results suggest that the extension of the policy raised the level of fertility, shortened the spacing of births, and induced fluctuations in the period fertility rates, but it did not change the negative relationship between women’s educational level and completed fertility.

Intergenerational Transmission of Fertility Patterns in Britain

Recent studies by economists exploring the nexus between culture and fertility have focused on cultural transmission from the origin country rather than the origin family. Our paper extends this avenue of research by investigating how family-specific ‘cultural transmission’ can affect fertility rates. In this context, we define ‘culture’ as referring to intra-family norms, and ‘cultural transmission’ refers to the transfer of these norms across generations within a family. We also allow for peer-group influences through the inclusion of controls for age cohorts and for non-English speaking country of birth. Following the methodology of Miranda (2005) and Machado and Santos Silva (2005), we estimate count data quantile regression models. Using unique data from the British Household Panel Survey, we find that a woman’s origin-family size is positively associated with her own completed fertility in the destination family and that her country of birth also matters. The effect of origin family size increases as we move from the lower to the upper tail of the conditional fertility distribution. For a sub-sample of continuously partnered men and women, both partners’ origin-family sizes significantly affect destination-family fertility. Our findings are robust to a number of specification checks.

Birth, Fortune, and Discrepant Fertility in Twentieth-Century America

Twentieth-century American men and women were often unable to live up to or down to their own fertility ideals. In a national random sample of 11,126 ever-married men and women over the age of 44, “discrepant fertility”—the difference between ideal fertility and completed fertility—was common. This article seeks to identify the causes of such discrepancies, and findings suggest that the most important exogenous factor is “birth cohort.” Those born prior to or after the Great Depression were prone to exhibit negative discrepant fertility, having had fewer children than they thought ideal, while those born during the Depression—the parents of the baby boom—were characterized by significant positive discrepant fertility, having had more children than they thought ideal. It is argued that these cohort effects are closely related to social and economic conditions that prevailed as twentieth-century Americans came of age and assessed their professional and familial prospects.

Assessing the use of sample selection models in the estimation of fertility postponement effects

Several studies have shown that at the individual level there exists a negative relationship between age at first birth and completed fertility. Using twin data in order to control for unobserved heterogeneity as possible source of bias, Kohler et al. (2001) showed the significant presence of such "postponement effect" at the micro level. In this paper, we apply sample selection models, where selection is based on having or not having had a first birth at all, to estimate the impact of postponing first births on subsequent fertility for four European nations, three of which have now lowest-low fertility levels. We use data from a set of comparative surveys (Fertility and Family Surveys), and we apply sample selection models on the logarithm of total fertility and on the progression to the second birth. Our results show that postponement effects are only very slightly affected by sample selection biases, so that sample selection models do not improve significantly the results of standard regression techniques on selected samples. Our results confirm that the postponement effect is higher in countries with lowest-low fertility levels.

Family formation among women in the U.S. military: Evidence from the nLSY

Although female employment is associated with lower levels of completed fertility in the civilian world, we find family formation rates among U.S. military women to be comparatively high. We compare enlisted women with civilian women using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,547), the only data set to measure simultaneously the nuptiality and fertility of both populations. Using propensity score matching, we show that the fertility effect derives primarily from early marriage in the military, a surprisingly “family‐friendly” institution. This shows that specific organizational and economic incentives in a working environment may offset the more widespread contemporary social and economic factors that otherwise depress marriage and fertility.

Timing effects and the interpretation of period fertility

Low fertility levels and later childbearing in many developed countries have reinvigorated the debate between period and cohort perspectives on fertility and on the meaningfulness of the period total fertility rate (TFR). Here, fertility-timing effects are defined as level changes in period fertility that do not reflect level changes in the completed fertility of cohorts. That definition leads to the average cohort fertility (ACF) as a measure of period fertility adjusted for timing effects. In an influential paper, Bongaarts and Feeney (1998) presented an alternative approach and a different measure, TFR*, to adjust for timing effects. Here, the two measures are compared. In the context of model populations, the ACF performs well, reflecting an average of the fertility of the active cohorts. The Bongaarts-Feeney TFR*, however, is frequently unreliable and can be erratic when there are cycles in period timing. When applied to twentieth-century U.S. experience, the TFR* behaves like a period measure and yields adjustments that are often wide of the mark. The ACF shows the stability associated with cohort measures and quantifies the substantial impact that timing effects had during the "birth dearth" of the 1970s. The period TFR reached a low of 1.74 in 1976, but the ACF never went below 2.06 during the 1970s.

Kin influence on female reproductive behavior: the evidence from reconstitution of the Bejsce parish registers, 18th to 20th centuries, Poland.

The phenomenon of kin-oriented help, according to inclusive fitness theory, should be of crucial importance with respect to the process of reproduction. This is due to the fact that the devoted time and resources might indirectly contribute to the reproductive performance of a donor. This study aimed at analyzing the kin effects on fertility in order to check whether help received from kinsmen enhance a recipient's reproduction in terms of parity transition risk, completed fertility, and the number of survivors. The data came from reconstitution of church registers from Bejsce parish, Poland. To estimate the kin effect, regression models for count outcomes and techniques of multilevel event history analysis were applied. The analyses have shown that completed fertility and parity-specific transition risks are strongly influenced by various kin groups. Moreover, a multilevel hazard model revealed differences in the patterns of the kin influence among controlled fertility than among natural fertility birth cohorts. Female reproductive outcome is influenced mainly by the presence of siblings and postreproductive helpers (grandparents). However, there is a negative impact of so-called helpers-at-the-nest (older children in the household) on parity transition risks.