Old-age Security Motive Research Articles

The Old-Age Security Motive for Fertility: Evidence from the Extension of Social Pensions in Namibia

The old-age security motive for fertility postulates that people’s needs for old-age support raise the demand for children. We exploit the extension of social pensions in Namibia during the 1990s to provide a quasi-experimental quantification of this widespread idea. The reform eliminated inequalities in pension coverage and benefits across regions and ethnic groups. Combining differences in pre-reform pensions and differences in exposure across cohorts, we show that pensions substantially reduce fertility, especially in late reproductive life. The results suggest that improving social protection for the elderly could go a long way in fostering fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa. (JEL H55, I38, J13, J14, O15)

Is landownership a ladder out of poverty?

This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the demo-economic effects of landownership in an agrarian economy facing population pressure. A family production structure with overlapping-generations is considered in which fertility is driven by an old-age security motive and two land property rights regimes coexist. Using the tragedy of the commons hypothesis, the model shows that the lack of landownership may contribute to high fertility, low capital investment and thus low living standards. By internalizing the land dilution effect of fertility, a private land regime lowers the population pressure, stimulates capital investment, and eases the poverty trap. These results cannot be obtained through productivity improvement measures and hold under various income allocation schemes among family members namely altruistic, perfectly competitive and egalitarian. The simulated joint behavior of fertility, capital investment and income per capita is consistent with the general agreement that more secure land rights are key determinants of economic development, and with numerous empirical evidences on the demoeconomic effects of landownership in some developing countries and in history.

An Economic Framework for Persisting Son Preference: Rethinking the Role of Intergenerational Support

Son preference drives pre- and post-natal discrimination of daughters in many countries. It surprisingly survives in societies undergoing rapid transformation, and its correlates are not fully understood, particularly in the socio-economic sphere. This paper reviews the old-age security motive for son preference and proposes a new framework for this rationale. We argue that in patrilocal contexts, son preference survives where informal economic institutions (community and especially the family) persist as primary safety nets against various instances of income uncertainty, making up for the inefficiencies of state and market (formal institutions). This hypothesis is tested through a cross-country statistical analysis of ecological correlates of pre- and post-natal discrimination. Results confirm that, while son preference expresses through daughters’ neglect in more traditional societies, it endures through prenatal selection in contexts of improving living standards and, at the same time, strong reliance on network solidarity and informal insurance strategies. In support of these findings, we briefly review the main country-cases of sex selection, namely South Korea, China, Vietnam, India and the South Caucasian region.

The Old-Age Security Motive for Fertility: Evidence from the Extension of Social Pensions in Namibia

The old-age security motive for fertility postulates that people's needs for old-age support raise the demand for children. We test this widespread idea using the extension of social pensions in Namibia during the nineties. The reform eliminated inequalities in pension coverage and benefit across regions and ethnic groups. Combining differences in pre-reform pensions and differences in exposure across cohorts, we show that pensions substantially reduce fertility, especially in late reproductive life. This article provides the first quasi-experimental quantification of the old-age security motive. The results suggest that improving social protection for the elderly could go a long way in fostering fertility decline in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Old-Age Security Motive for Fertility: Evidence from the Extension of Social Pensions in Namibia

The old-age security motive for fertility postulates that people's needs for old-age support raise the demand for children. We test this widespread idea using the extension of social pensions in Namibia during the nineties. The reform eliminated inequalities in pension coverage and benefit across regions and ethnic groups. Combining differences in pre-reform pensions and differences in exposure across cohorts, we show that pensions substantially reduce fertility, especially in late reproductive life. This article provides the first quasi-experimental quantification of the old-age security motive. The results suggest that improving social protection for the elderly could go a long way in fostering fertility decline in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Son Preference Meets Technology: The Missing Girls of Albania

After nearly half a century of communist rule, and more than twenty years of economic transition in Albania, traditional gender roles persist and sex ratios at birth are strongly masculinised. This paper finds support for a hypothesis that perturbed under-5 sex ratios in Albania can be partly explained by the economic incentives of population subgroups to access sex information technology and abortion. Masculinisation of births is concentrated amongst higher order births, for all population subgroups. Consistent with an old-age security motive for bearing sons, the effects of male first-borns on the mid-life employment of women are strongest amongst those with relatively poor labour market options.

An Old-Age Security Motive for Fertility in the United States?

This study reviewed the literature on the old age security motive for childbearing and estimates the poverty alleviating contributions of a coresident family to the elderly in the US. Data were obtained from the 1984 Panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPPS) of the US Census Bureau the National Survey of Informal Caregivers and the 1982 National Long-Term Care Survey. In 1984 poverty among the elderly dropped below the overall US rate. The sample included 2383 unmarried elderly aged over 65 years in 1984. Financial resources include more options than that provided in official poverty measures. Analysis reveals that the combined financial and functional care provided by coresident relatives kept about 1.3 million elderly (11.0% of all unmarried elderly) from falling into poverty. 50% of the poverty would be due to functional assistance alone. Without this family support the unmarried elderly poverty rate would have doubled to 24.3%. Without coresidence financial and functional assistance almost 50% (44.7%) of disabled unmarried elderly would be poor. Only 14.3% were observed to be poor in 1984. 1 in 3 were kept out of poverty by family members. 59.7% of severely disabled would be poor. 21.2% of Black elderly 9.7% of White elderly and 15% of elderly with under 12 years of schooling would be poor without family assistance. Findings highlight the inadequacies in public support programs for old age security and the cogency of persons choosing childbearing as the best insurance against lower lifetime earnings and security.

An Econometric Analysis of the Old-Age Security Motive for Childbearing

A switching regression for birth interval lengths with endogenous switching is developed to test Mead Cains contention that parents fertility decisions arise from lexicographic preferences for old-age security. The model is estimated as a survival model using Malaysian data. Assuming that contraceptors constitute the group of parents who have attained the minimal number of children with which they feel their old-age support is secure strong support for Cains concept of old-age security as the principal interest of those parents who have not yet attained a sufficient number of children appears in these data. However the income effect accompanying the provision of alternative means of old-age support generates an ambiguous effect on subsequent fertility. (EXCERPT)

The Value of Sons in an Indian Village: How Widows See It

In a micro-study in rural India the old-age security motive for high fertility among widows, who are generally considered to be a particularly vulnerable group was investigated. Thirty of the 123 village widows, representing different economic situations and living arrangements, were selected for in-depth interviews. Comparisons were made between widows who were primary breadwinners and had dependent sons living with them, widows who lived with earning sons but were not totally dependent on them; and widows who resided with and were economically dependent on their sons, as well as those who lived with their daughters. Economic factors alone did not account for the pervasive son-preference in the community: sons had a deeper cultural significance which persisted even when widows were financially well-off or independent. It is argued that the emphasis given to economic explanations in previous fertility research has masked the importance of cultural factors which still remain largely unexplored.

Old-age security motives, labor markets, and farm family fertility in antebellum American

The demand for children on the part of farm couples in antebellum America declined as labor market opportunities outside the agricultural sector improved. A connection between these two secular developments was forged by the operation of the old-age security motive for raising children. In exchange for their role in providing old-age security for their parents, the mature offspring of a farm couple expected to receive a portion of the farm family's wealth, either as an inheritance or as an inter vivos transfer. The terms of this exchange are modeled as the outcome of an intergenerational bargaining process. The bargaining position and hence the allotted share of the young improved when they could point to greater opportunities for employment which they would forgo by remaining in the neighborhood of the parental farmstead. The value of children as old-age security assets consequently diminished. Under identifiable conditions, rational parents would respond by reducing their fertility. In multivariate regressions to explain the antebellum United States pattern of geographical variation in a fertility index (the rural white refined birth ratio), measures of nonagricultural labor market opportunities are found to have a large and significantly negative effect, as the foregoing theory predicts. The most widely cited alternative explanation for temporal and spatial variations in the fertility of the rural white population—the decreasing availability of cheap farmland with the progress of settlement—is shown to have little explanatory power when the labor market opportunity variables are included in the cross-section regression for state-wide averages in 1840.

The Old-Age Security Motive for Fertility

The conditions under which the old-age security motive could be expected to be significant for fertility are described. Such conditions are likely to prevail in rural areas of developing countries and especially among women. Empirical studies on the subject are evaluated and the inconclusive and contradictory nature of the findings are attributed to failures to select appropriate samples and variables. Most findings derive from studies only marginally concerned with the old-age security motive for fertility. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research. Some of the earlier studies found surprisingly little or no relation between the old-age pension participation variables and various measures of fertility especially in developing countries. More recent studies have generally found significant negative relationships. Entwisle and Winegarden obtained evidence of a reinforcing feedback from low fertility to the expansion of the depth and breadth of coverage of participation in old-age security programs. A study done by DeVany and Sanchez concluded that the land-retention and other benefits of children to their parents are greater for those living on land which cannot be bought or sold than for those on privately owned land. Nugent and Gillaspy found that fertility changes between 1960 and 1970 across counties were negatively related to the size of the social security proxy variable. Cains 1981 study showed that the insecurity characterizing rural areas of developing countries is not limited to old age and disability but also includes calamitous events whose presence contribute to high fertility. The 1980 study of Vlassoff and Vlassoff concluded that old-age security was unimportant as a motive for fertility. There is a need for additional more systematic and more special-purpose empirical studies to investigate the impact of old-age security on fertility. Studies should be conducted in rural areas of developing countries where the old-age pension motive is expected to be strong. The sample size should be large enough to afford the opportunity to isolate the old-age pension affects from the effects of other variables and data collection should be repeated at various times. (summaries in ENG FRE SPA)

Are old-age security and the utility of children in rural India really unimportant?

Abstract Extract In their recent paper in this journal M. and Carol Vlassoff are to be commended for helping to remedy the dearth of empirical studies on the old-age security motive for children (and particularly sons) in rural areas of developing countries.(1) However, while the questionnaire which they applied to 357 ever-married men in a rural village in Maharashtra state in India is potentially useful, several of the conclusions they derive from it are unwarranted and, if left unquestioned, would undoubtedly have the effect of setting back the serious investigation of the effects of this motive rather than furthering it. The invalid or at least questionable inferences are taken up one at a time in the order of their appearance:

Old Age Pensions and Fertility in Rural Areas of Less Developed Countries: Some Evidence from Mexico

Previous articleNext article No AccessOld Age Pensions and Fertility in Rural Areas of Less Developed Countries: Some Evidence from MexicoJeffrey B. Nugent and R. Thomas GillaspyJeffrey B. Nugent Search for more articles by this author and R. Thomas Gillaspy Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Economic Development and Cultural Change Volume 31, Number 4Jul., 1983 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/451359 Views: 23Total views on this site Citations: 29Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1983 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Keisuke Kondo Does agglomeration discourage fertility? 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