Poster session on Fertility (1)

Informed by the Theory of Planned Behavior, this study examines the hypothesis that individuals’ background factors are external variables influencing fertility intentions largely through attitudes to positive or negative outcome of having a (another) child, perceived norms, measuring external social pressures for having a/another child, and perceived behavioral control, measuring whether a person is able to have a (another) child. This study uses data from the 2012 Tehran Survey of Fertility Intentions, conducted by the author among a representative sample of 2,267 married women aged less than 36 and men living with such women in Tehran, the capital of Iran. Multivariate results show that individuals who viewed having a (another) child more detrimental for their personal life, those who felt less social pressures from their peers for having a (another) child, and those who perceived a greater control over resources, required for childbearing, were more likely to intend to have no (more) children or to be unsure rather than to have a/another child. Attitudes and norms had a greater effect on the intention to have a first child, whereas the intention to a second child was largely influenced by attitudes and perceived behavioral control. The implications of the results for polices, aiming to raise fertility, are discussed.

The percentage of children born as twins has increased since the middle of the 20th Century. During the year 2012, 2.7 percent of the children in Sweden were born as twins or triplets, whereas in 1950 that same proportion was 1.9 percent. This study compares twins and non-twins in Sweden using administrative register data. The database contains 8.8 million individuals born between 1932 and 2012 of which 187 000 were born as twins, triplets or quadruplets. During the 20th century, the fertility rate in Sweden was characterized by big fluctuations and this study shows that both twins and non-twins followed the same trends during that time. However, women twins have had a lower fertility rate than non-twins for all years between 1980 and 2012. In addition, a higher proportion of twins compared to non-twins were also childless by the age of 45. Curiously, discrepancies are not found only when comparing twins and non-twins. When a comparison is made between twin sisters and brother and sister twins, the study shows that the women with a twin sister had a lower fertility rate than those with a twin brother. Could different demographic and socioeconomic variables help explain the differences?

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
As per the technical committee projections and target set by government the TFR will reach a level of 2.7-2.9 by 2016. However, there is no clear guidance on the level of CPR and appropriate methods mix to achieve that TFR.
Under this backdrop the specific objectives of the paper is to identify
1. targeted level of CPR and method mix suitable for achieving a targeted TFR
2. appropriate method mix that government of Bihar should focus
DATA AND METHOD
The data for the projection is used from the NFHS and AHS. The assumptions related to different population characteristics “Technical group on projection, GoI, 2006.
FINDINGS
It is found that the CPR level of 50 per cent, with a method mix close to Bihar urban and focused on IUD is best for Bihar. The target for Fst and IUD assigned for the state is unrealistic. The HMIS data of Bihar is subject to over reporting of acceptors.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
The family planning program in Bihar should be focused on targeting 5 lakhs of IUD and female sterilization per year, considering the infrastructural constraints.

The increase in the proportion of children born to cohabiters is usually taken as a sign that societies have reached a stage in the family formation processes where cohabitation is a legitimate alternative to marriage, which is losing importance as an institution. Recent research in Europe has shown that marriage usually takes places among unmarried people in the years that follow the birth of a child, indicating that marriage is being postponed, but it is still the preferred setting for childrearing. This paper analyzes the case of Chile, where the proportion of children born to unmarried mothers is about 70 percent, whereas cohabitation is less than 20 percent. The paper ask whether Chile is the scenery for the same type of union transitions that are being observed in Europe, which may explain the contradiction between the proportion of children born outside of marriage and the proportion of cohabiters

Poland enter the low fertility level (below 2,1 TFR) in 1988 (urban 1983, rural 1995). In this context the survey “Late fertility diagnosis – prospective cohort survey: demographic socio-economic and health determinants” was conducted in 2007/2008. Main goal of empirical research is identification of determinants: scale, range of changes in fertility level in Poland to very low fertility level, description of decision process including postponement decisions and demographic, socio-economic and health determinants of those decisions.
One of sections of the questionnaire was dedicated to evaluation of actual family Policy, forms of support to families, maternity and parental leaves, forms of taking care of children.
Summing up results of his survey: women as the most important reason of lower fertility level named: housing problems and lack of flexible working hours. Women in Poland living in big cities are not satisfied with actual family policy. Family Policy must be considered as the part of social policy to be effective. Only policies supporting social norms have chances to work well. Last changes in polish family policy go well with changes observed in other European countries. Governments pay more attention to supply families with good conditions for procreation decisions.

In the analysis of parents’ roles during the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) our stance draws on the social norms’ approach. Data from a qualitative study (15 focus group discussions, 87 participants) shows that from a normative view there are two main domains of decision-making concerning reproduction: (1) delays to reproduction driven by new norms stressing that a family should only be established once a state of economic independence and self-actualisation has been reached, and (2) gender dynamics – a push-pull dilemma, in which women tend to pull men into the sphere that has traditionally been the domain of women, and simultaneously try to maintain their leading position in the household, thus reinforcing the norm of the irreplaceable mother. These findings are tested in the broader context of psycho-social variables in a quantitative survey (representative national sample, N=1400).

Work-family balance is an important issue when studying the link between low fertility and family policies. However, in times when educational investments last longer and longer, it becomes increasingly important to study also how motherhood can be combined with continuous investments in human-capital and how the socioeconomic context plays a role in the education-family balance.
Adopting a life course perspective, I study the impact of the transition to motherhood on educational enrollment in Romania and other European countries (with available GGS data) based on the presupposition that motherhood has a negative effect, by reducing educational aspirations. However, since institutional and cultural factors do play a crucial role in shaping life-course interrelationship, I intend to disentangle between three calendar periods: the 1980s, the 1990s, and the 2000s. For Romania and other former-communist countries these periods mark: i) the last years of the communist authoritarian regime, ii) the first years of transition to democracy and market economy, and iii) the consolidated capitalist regime. For the countries with stable sociopolitical regimes, the comparative analyses by period reveal the dynamic of the relationship between motherhood and completion of studies, and highlight the differences with the CEE countries.

High spousal age difference shows different reproductive outcomes, especially among the married adolescent girls. This is because older husbands use to take reproductive decisions alone and try to compensate for delayed marriage. This study hypothesizes that adolescents with comparatively older husbands tend to get more children and have children earlier than their counterparts. Bangladesh DHS 2007 was used for the in-depth analyses. About 43% of the adolescents were married before the legal age (18 years) at marriage for girls in Bangladesh. About 22.3% of the adolescents had spousal age difference 5 years or less. Almost half (47%) of the married adolescents have their first child within one year of marriage. Poisson regression model suggested that the relative risk of having children among adolescent with spousal age difference 5 years or less was 0.554 compared to the adolescents with spousal age difference more than 15 years. The relative risk increased to 0.730 for spousal age difference between 6-10 years. A binary logistic regression model suggested that adolescents having spousal age difference 11-15 years were 2.45 times significantly more likely to have their first child within one year of their marriage compared to adolescents having spousal age difference 5 years or less.

Out of any expectation, fertility fell down very rapidly in the last three decades of the past century. From 8.1 children per women in 1970 TFR reached 2.2 in 2001, almost exactly the replacement level. However, marital fertility reduced less (from 11.1 children per women in 1970 to 5.9 in 2001) and remained quite high.
While general fertility was strongly associated to indicators of the modernization like, urbanisation, level of education, women’ occupational activity, etc., marital fertility was not or very few. It seems clear that the influence of these pieces of modernization on fertility is mainly the result of their influence on age at marriage, which determines the beginning of the actual period of reproductive activity open to women, and much less that of contraception, which determines childbearing during the marriage.
We got the opportunity of accessing an extract of individual data from the 1998 census. Togather with aggregate data from all other available surveys (ENSP 1970, ENAF 1986, Papchild 1992, Pamfam 2001, MICS-3 2006) and censuses (1966, 1977, 1987, 1998, 2008), it helps to understand the factors of the Algerian fertility transition, especially, the link between socioeconomic characteristics, levels of fertility and marriage practices.