Public policies and low fertility

India and Brazil face the same nature of challenges regarding the supply of family planning services and, more specifically, of tubal ligation. The size and complexity of decentralized political and administrative organizations in both countries imprint a high degree of difficulty in health provision that central governments and state-level authorities are not able to control and enforce. In this sense, local-level heterogeneity as for economic, political, social, and demographic differences reigns. The aim of this article is to analyze the factors associated with the differentials in the access of tubal ligation and clinical reversible methods in the public health sector in Brazil and India as well as to establish and discuss common treads stemming from public policies and politics that influence family planning. The focus is on poor women parity two or higher. We use the 2006 Demographic and Health Survey for Brazil and the National Family Health Survey 2005-06 for India. Although access has improved over time our findings point that contemporary obstacles to public family planning services can be traced in the early initiatives and are related to the political economy of family planning organization in the three spheres of political power – central, state-, and local-level.

After sharp fall in the 1990s, Iran’s fertility decline slowed down during the 2000s fallen to around replacement level. Following two decades of fertility control policies, more recently, the Iranian Government has been concerned that fertility will fall to a very low level and a draft pronatalist policy has been designed and is being put to the parliament. The concern has been based on estimates that Iran’s current fertility is as low as 1.6, but there are questions about the reliability of estimates of fertility. There is a near-to-complete birth registration system but how near-to-complete is unknown. Own children estimates are possible but they too may not be sufficiently reliable. Furthermore, cross-sectional fertility measures can be confounded by changes in the timing of births across women's lifetimes (tempo) as well as by changes in the numbers of children that they have by the time they end their childbearing (quantum). When the age-based TFR is used, tempo and quantum can be assessed a long time after the fact by comparing the TFR for real birth cohorts with the cross-sectional or synthetic TFR. The problems involved in assessing tempo and quantum using the age-based TFR can be overcome by using parity progression ratios. The findings suggest that tempo effects evident particularly in the 1990s are no longer evident.

Few European countries such as France, Belgium or Denmark still report cohort fertility rates close to 2.0, while in the bordering German-speaking countries the CFR-levels are only at 1.6 children. These differences are usually explained by disparities in social norms and social policies, whose influence is difficult to isolate due to their mutual interdependence. Our study aims to disentangle them by analyzing a quasi-natural experiment. After WWI two German districts were ceded to Belgium. The population retained its German linguistic identity, but has been subject to Belgian policies. We use (micro)-census data to compare the fertility of the Belgian German minority with data for western Germany and the Flemish- and French-speaking population of Belgium. Our findings indicate that the fertility outcomes of the Belgian German minority resemble more the Belgian than the German pattern. This provides support for the view that institutional factors are relevant for understanding fertility differences between Belgium and Germany.

Egypt has experienced a remarkable decline in its TFR from 5.3 children per woman to 3 in 2008. Since late 1990s, however, fertility is stalled. Recent data, EDHS 2008, show that for women of every age group the mean ideal number of children is persistently above two children. This article focuses on identifying the plausible factors that are likely to influence women's ability to achieve their desire of two children using multivariate logistic models and estimating their net impact. Furthermore, it examines the level of consistency among women who have, contrary to the average norm, desired two children and studies the profile of those who succeeded in fulfilling their desires. The study provides evidence that Expanding educational opportunities is necessary to reduce fertility level from its high level. However, our study have found that expanding women's educational opportunities is not enough to achieve further reduction during this transitional stage, it should be coupled with the following three important factors; 1) rising age at marriage, 2) increasing women’s participation in the formal labor market by which the costs of motherhood will be high, and 3) improving quality of health services to rise chances for child survival by which families are in no need to have extra children to compensate for child loss.

China's population policy is now at a crossroad. Singapore, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, which are quite similar to China in terms of cultural traditions and policy trajectory, all choose pro-natal policies, yet the results were not satisfactory. The procedures of their policy transition can provide reference for China's policy options.

This paper conducts an in-depth analysis of the motivation, process and features of policy change in these countries/regions, explains affecting factors and compares the characteristics and outcomes of population policy before and after the change. On such a basis and combining the realities of China, this paper analyzes the existing barriers to China's population policy change, and suggests China to initiate population change as soon as possible. It also calls for attention paid to the scientificalness and democracy in policy-making, progressivity in policy adjustment and good coordination between policies.

Publicly provided or subsidized childcare for children under three years is rising in many European countries. This should reduce conflicts between family and work and thus stimulate fertility. However, previous studies investigating this relationship found inconsistent results. This paper examines the impact of publicly provided or subsidized childcare on individual childbearing behavior in Germany. In addition to childcare services, also childcare attitudes are considered. The central argument is that childcare provision might incentivize entry into motherhood given that women generally approve the concept of child-minding outside the family. Using discrete time hazard models, we analyze the new yearly German family panel pairfam combined with regional data for the period between 2008 and 2010.

Turkey has gone through major fertility decline since 1960s. The TFR declined from around 7 to replacement level today; faster than predicted by earlier projections. Population policies also changed during this process: Antinatalist policies replaced pronatalist ones, with growing emphasis on reproductive health. Today, as a candidate member to EU, Turkey is maybe a decade away from becoming the most populous country of Europe. However, Turkey’s current prime minister has been explicitly suggesting that couples have at least three children in the recent years. The argument is based on the idea that Turkey’s population is ageing, and will be similar to European populations today; and that this would put Turkey in the risk of economic stress in the upcoming decades. Thus we aimed to discuss whether a “three children policy” was the answer to Turkey’s ageing problem. We came up with different scenarios of fertility change and projected populations accordingly. Preliminary findings showed that although an increased TFR would help maintain a lower elderly dependency ratio, the actual population of elderly would still require extensive planning. Furthermore, child dependency ratios would be increase, putting more pressure on the working population. We lean towards alternative solutions to the ageing problem.

The support of the families with children is the most important part of the family policy, especially in countries with fertility below the replacement level. Such countries are on their road to the depopulation. Russia has joined to the low fertility countries in the 1960-s; since that time a housing problem is the sensitive topic for many families in Russia; housing acute shortage, bad quality of living conditions are one of the top of obstacles to have another child in Russia. This study examines the housing problem in family policy in Russia and in France. This project is an analysis of the different family policy measures in Russia in the demographic and economic context and their potential efficiency comparing to the French and European experience in the same area. Author explores regional differences in housing problem aspects and solutions in family support (measures and budget expenses) and demographic results in different regions of Russian Federation. The data set of the research is the waves of Russian and French GGS and the recent survey “Family and Fertility” conducted in Russia in 2009.

We examines changes in nuptiality and marital fertility as determinants for fertility changes in Singapore for 1980-2010. Singapore has drawn demographers' attentions for intensive population control policies and their effects on fertility. One of the most frequently mentioned policy interventions is a promotion of marriage and its distinct effects by education attainment levels. Ethnic differentials of fertility are also argued as an extent that Chinese females are relatively better educated. Nevertheless, there are few studies directly analyzing either an effect of nuptiality on fertility changes or its ethnic differentials, partly because of a limited data availability.
We estimates multistate lifetables of the 1st marriage and parity specific childbirths by ethnic group each year for 1980-2010 with an efficient use of limited data. Then, we decompose the effects of nuptiality and marital fertility on completed fertility measures constructed from the lifetales. Decomposition results uncover ethnic differentials and similarities: for overall fertility changes for 1980-2010, nuptiality accounted completely for Malay's fertility changes, while both nuptiality and marital fertility affected Chinese fertility; negative nuptiality effects have increasingly impacts both on Malay's and Chinese fertilities in recent years.

How does locally induced demand for public services adapt to national public policies? Changing fertility puts pressure on the supply of local social services. Sweden is often used as a positive example for welfare states not least when it comes to measures within pre-school child care. Since the 1990s Sweden’s system of collective pre-school child care has been transformed to a system which combines collective care with individual choices. Our main question is how these changing policies have affected the supply and quality of the service of pre-school day care knowing that fluctuations of fertility rates affect the demand. On a national level the number of places available is close to the level of demand. But the demand for pre-school child care fluctuates according to fertility which is expressed at the local level. So at the local level such an equilibrium between demand and supply is more vulnerable and it is far from always that this demand can be met.
To study the local management of the day care system and to test the homogeneity of day care supply to pre-school kids in Sweden in different regions we will use this data together with data on day care (förskolor) from the association for local governments (Statenskommunerochlandsting SKL) and link those data with the database on individual level at Statistics Sweden.