Population and policy challenges in East Asia

Ideal family sizes [IFS] are useful in indicating both possible future directions of fertility in a given society as well as providing a ‘barometer’ to general societal-level attitudes towards childbearing and families. In China, an improved understanding of IFS can go some way to examining both the possible consequences of future reforms in family planning legislation and, related to this, to judge whether the country has fallen into the ‘Low Fertility Trap’ where small families become normalised.

We will present the results of a meta-review of almost 100 studies of Chinese IFS. Even after readjustment for ‘politically correct’ response bias, IFS in China are well below replacement rate in both rural and urban areas, pointing to the internalisation of the one child family. Rather than a residual of family planning restrictions, we show IFS reported in China are similar to those reported elsewhere in Hong Kong and Taiwan. This accords with much recent research which has emphasised the role of urbanisation, economic development and social change in driving fertility decline in China rather than the explicit effect of family planning restrictions.

This suggests that reform of the family planning restrictions may not have a major impact upon period or cohort TFR in China.

China has one of the most skewed sex ratio at birth (SRB) in the world. However, while the SRB in Hong Kong (HK) has historically been much lower (~106), it has recently seen a dramatic increase.

We use a very large, detailed data-set (N 850,331) of all recorded births in HK between 1995 and 2009 to calculate new SRBs for the territory both by parity and, by virtue of the large sample size, by a much more detailed set of immigrant partnership variables.

At parity one, the SRBs of both HK born couples and other immigrants are broadly similar. At parity two, the SRB of HK born parents is 107.8. Among recent arrived immigrants from Mainland China, this rises to 127.1. At parities three and four, the HK born SRBs rise to 110.6 and 116.6, while the recently arrived Mainland Chinese SRB is 216.0 and 264.3.

HK has been serving as an outlet for 'elite Mainland couples' able to afford the costs of giving birth there to circumvent the both anti-prenatal sex selection legislation and family planning regulations to achieve the desired effect: a male offspring.

Irepodun Local Government Area, Kwara State was used as case study in order to examine the role of self-help projects in rural development in Nigeria. Data for the study were obtained through the administration of 400 copies of questionnaire format on randomly selected respondents in the study area. The study revealed that funds for self help projects and subsequent development of their communities were only accomplished mainly through the contribution of community unions/association because majority of the respondents earned less than 20,000 naira. The Chi-square and correlation results established a relationship between population and self help projects for rural development. This was assented to by respondents who affirmed that the self help projects have improved their living standard.
Apparently the level and efficiency of self help projects in rural communities influences the development of the rural areas in Nigeria. Governments should therefore redirect its rural development towards developmental projects in rural areas by making if people centered for each and every community in the rural areas of Nigeria. This will ensure an equitable distribution of self help projects, an essential tool for balanced development of the rural areas in Nigeria.

Over the past 20 years, China’s migration transition has been moving from a stage of individual migration to a stage of family migration. Using data from 2006 One-per-Thousand Floating Population Survey in Beijing, this paper examines family and residential patterns of the migrants in Beijing and the determinants of family migration. In 2006, the percentage of family migration among total migration stood at 60%, more than double that reported in a survey 10 years ago. Family patterns are dominated by households consisting of one married couple and one married couple plus children. Three-fourths of the married migrants are living with their spouse, while slightly more than half of the migrants who have children are living with their children. The mean size of migrant households is 2 persons and the mean size of married migrant households is 2.3 persons, which is considerably lower than the average household size (3.4 persons) of the general rural population in China. Individual characteristics and the district of Beijing where the migrant lives significantly affect the likelihood of family migration. One important finding is that non-economic factors, such as for better children’s education, have become a more important driving force in family migration.

The aims of the study are survey, collect and disseminate information on violation of the Thailand Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes and Related Products (Thailand Code). The survey is conducted in the year 2010 with adoption of survey research in 2 aspects (the Thailand Code violation in 74 hospitals and 269 mothers of children aged up to one year). The questionnaire has been adapted from a survey form of compliance with the Code Monitoring Kit of the International Baby Food Action Network.

Results on Thailand Code violation are almost all companies violate Thailand Code. A drugstore is the most popular venue where violation by manufacturer and distributor companies is found. Advertisement is the most important reason that mothers feed their children with breastmilk substitutes. Most of mothers receive breastmilk substitutes from milk companies. Places where breastmilk substitutes are given included markets, shops, department stores and clinic. The majority of mothers receive products when they seek medical service during pregnancy, delivery and after delivery. The apparent lack of impact of the Thailand Code of Ethnics on the breast feeding practices may be because the Thailand Code has no legal backing for enforcement. Therefore, Thailand Code should be developing to be law or regulation.

Mixed marriages have long been considered important indicators of the social integration of immigrants, as well as potential factors of social and cultural change. Nowadays, much of the interest towards this topic is in the potential adoption for policy purposes of mixed marriages as indicator of social integration of migrants, a dimension still missing in existing sets of indicators which mostly cover the economic dimensions (cf. Huddleston et al. 2011, Eurostat 2011). However, there is not a single measure to analyse mixed marriages. Lanzieri (2011) has reviewed several of them, making a first assessment of their capacity to properly follow the dynamics of mixed marriages. In that preliminary analysis, it is found that some measures do not have the expected behaviour. By using simulated data, this study intends to extend and deepen that investigation, looking at the behaviour of the measures of mixed marriages when their dynamic over time is analysed. The purpose is thus to assess whether those measures provide a reliable indication of the extent and speed of change, looking from the perspective of a user (such as a policy-maker) who needs to monitor the process of migrants' integration.

Not many people realize that a country such as Indonesia also faces ageing population. This paper aims to provide a policy option on how to finance the Indonesia’s older population. It starts by showing why ageing population is a relevant issue in Indonesia, particularly its financial implication. It then shows that in 1960s and 1970s Indonesia had policies on how to finance the baby boomers with its strong family planning programme. Today Indonesia faces a different question: how to finance the rising number and percentage of the baby boomers who will soon become older persons.
Before elaborating on the recommendation to manage the economic consequences of the explosion of older persons, the paper discusses the theory and debate on the relationship between population growth (and size) with economic development. From this discussion, the paper arrives at a recommendation on a life-long approach, considering population of all ages, and not only the older persons. It is an integrated package of four recommendations which have to be implemented simultaneously. If not implemented simultaneously, the package can create feeling of injustice among the society. This package is not only aimed for older persons, but for the whole population.

To understand and to measure the economic pressure caused by population ageing is a great difficulty in demography. Moreover, whether and how population ageing can be effectively intervened and regulated is a common concern and debatable issue among the policy makers and demographers. This paper is going to make a probe into these issues with China as an example. By adopting innovative approaches, the author makes quantitative analysis and international comparative study of the economic pressure of population ageing of China between 1980 and 2050. On the basis of these studies, this research tries to explore the necessity, feasibility and a possible path to regulate China’s economic pressure of population ageing by relying on its birth control policy.

The approach adopted in this research to measure the economic pressure of population ageing is the Ageing and Economics Coordination Index (AECI for short) proposed by the author in 2009. The conception of the AECI has made the economic pressure of population ageing quantifiable and comparable.

The data of this research are generally quoted from the World Bank, the United Nations, and the 2010 national census of China.

This study will contribute to a better understanding of the unique “China Paradigm” in population ageing.

Proportion of shotgun birth is rapidly increasing in South Korea. Using the complete birth records of Korea from 1997 to 2009, we study the impact of shotgun birth and out-of-wedlock birth on birth outcome. The decrease in normal births is almost entirely replaced by shotgun births. We find that premarital pregnancy impact, especially shotgun birth impact, on birth weight and low birth weight probability is either statistically insignificant or economically insignificant. Therefore the impact of rapidly increasing shotgun birth of South Korea on birth outcome is trivial.

Some Asian countries have experienced increasingly surplus of men in the marriageable age cohort. The existing literature on its impacts uses aggregate sex ratio. However, the relevance of skewed sex ratio to family decisions mainly relies on how social interactions in the reference group convey this pressure. This paper adopts a unique social network data, collected from households' long term spontaneous gift exchange records, with a primary census-type household panel data from Chinese villages to explore the prevalence of men's localized pressure to get married. We focus on comparing families with their first-born child a boy versus a girl and distinguish the network spillover effect from the direct effect. The spatial econometric decompositions suggest that the pressure mainly originates from a few friends with unmarried son and are faced with unbalanced sex ratios in the friendship networks, though own village sex ratio and having unmarried son also affect parental risk-taking behavior. We also find similar patterns for parental working hours, their likelihood to engage in entrepreneurial activities and decision to migrate. Since the sex ratio imbalance in China will probably worsen in the next decade, disentangling the real sources of marriage market pressure may help design targeting policy to improve parental well-being.