Public policies and low fertility

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.

This paper informs about the findings of the seminar on Patterns of Economic Development, Social Change, and Fertility Decline in Comparative Perspective: Analysis and Policy Implications organized by the IUSSP Scientific Panel on Below Replacement Fertility: Causes, Consequences and Policy Responses in collaboration with Fudan University in Shanghai in May 2012. The aim of the seminar was to improve the understanding of the patterns and causes of fertility decline to below replacement level in different settings, and to consider their policy implications. A number of papers dealt with issues of fertility in individual countries, such as South Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Russia and especially China. Moreover, the seminar yielded some unforeseen results demonstrating that “below replacement fertility” can be sufficient to support the wellbeing of contemporary populations. There are numerous mechanisms to achieve this goal. Immigration enlarges the population of reproductive and working age. Higher education enhances the productivity of the labor force and thus its ability to support dependents. Of equal importance is the recognition that modern labor and capital productivity might render contemporary rich countries capable of supporting the dependent age groups with a relatively small proportion of population of working age.

In 2007, Germany introduced an income-related paid parental leave with an explicit incentive for fathers. This much noticed policy reform has several goals such as raising female labour market participation and gender equality, also it aims raising fertility. Five years after introduction of this paid parental leave is a good time to take stock and analyse the effects. Does this new policy affect fertility behaviour? How have female occupational patterns changed? Do parental leave effects differ from the experience of Northern European countries?
This paper goes into the matter by analysing both SOEP and Micro Census for the period 2003-2010. The combination of those data sets allows the use of both event history analyses (SOEP) and cross-sectional differentiations with high N (Micro Census) – combining the strengths of both potential German data sets. The results show effects regarding the different goals of this policy. Although there is no general effect of the reform on the transition rate to the 2nd child, we observe an increase of fertility for high educated women. The female labour market participation increases for mothers of toddlers. Additionally, the care participation of fathers increases. Finally, the findings of this German case study are discussed in the light of the current research on policy effects.

This paper, among the first, dynamically estimates the effects of China’s family planning policy on fertility with a micro-level panel data, transformed from the cross-sectional birth history data of the China Health and Nutrition Survey. This paper applies a mixed proportional hazard duration model where the unobserved individual heterogeneity is non-parametrically specified, recommended by Heckman and Singer (1984), and extends the improved policy measures from Wang (2012)’s static analysis to dynamic analysis. It’s found that, the one-child policy, the most recent and ongoing period of China’s policies, has remarkably negative effects on the probabilities of having the second and third child, but shows little impact for other birth orders. The effects of earlier periods of policies are simply trivial through all birth orders. Therefore, family planning policies didn’t play a major role in China’s fertility transition which mainly happened before the one-child policy period. Further, a more-educated woman tends to respond to policy shocks at lower birth orders in contrast to a less-educated woman, because the former desires a smaller family. Moreover, the model without heterogeneity would strikingly overestimate the policy effects and a parametric heterogeneity might also bias the estimation.

Household spending on education is exceptionally high in East Asia, including Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, and has been cited as a cause of low fertility. This observation is sometimes attributed to a cultural emphasis on education in East Asia. In this paper, we present evidence that institutional factors, namely university admissions policies, play an important role in reinforcing pressures on parents to invest in their children’s education. This, in turn, leads to higher costs of childbearing and lower fertility. Using data from the 2005-2007 REFLEX survey, we present quantitative evidence that graduating from a prestigious university is associated with much higher labor market premiums in Japan than in two other countries with very low fertility, Italy and Spain, and corroborating evidence suggesting that the higher premiums are at least in part generated through causal pathways. We model the impact of the higher premiums on investment in education and fertility using a quantity-quality model. Finally, we offer a novel set of “reverse one-child” policies that directly address the unintended consequences of this education-job institutional nexus for East Asian fertility. The policies have the additional virtues of having very low fiscal requirements and reducing social inequality.

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.

The idea of fertility recuperation emerged when demographers found that higher average age at first child (AFC) was not predicting lower completed fertility anymore. A common demographic portrayal of fertility recuperation is the comparison of age-specific fertility rates between two consecutive cohorts, which typically shows a “catching-up” dynamic. But that portrayal is mostly qualitative and does not define clear measures of postponing and recuperating. It does not tell, for example, whether recuperation is due to an increase of fertility among late AFC women, or is due to women of any AFC increasing their fertility. In both cases the “catching up” dynamics will be the same. This article A) elaborates on a quantitative portrait of fertility recuperation, based on AFC-conditional fertility rates, and B) performs an empirical application using European survey data, where it is found that cohorts where recuperation is first found are characterized by higher fertility of late AFC women; these women, in fact, entirely explain the appearance of the recuperation.

It has been argued that generous family policy aiming at a gender equal division of childcare and economic responsibility will have a positive impact on childbearing. In this study we ask whether different usages of parental leave are related to continued childbearing and whether there has been a policy effect on fertility behaviour from introducing the father’s quota in the Nordic countries. The major argument for why gender equality in parental leave use would increase fertility is that a more equal division in the household would ease women’s work burden at home and thus enhance the degree of compatibility between childrearing and female employment, thereby making it easier to realize childbearing plans. In order to distinguish causality in effects from selection we will use the natural experiment of the introduction of the father’s quotas in Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

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.

This paper discusses the links between parenthood, happiness and policies, taking a comparative perspective. Its motivation derives from recent analysis suggesting a positive relationship between happiness and fertility. Taking a multilevel approach, we find that parental happiness, and thus wellbeing associated with childbearing, depends on a series of country characteristics – ranging from economic prosperity, trust, social capital and gender equality. We reflect on its policy implications and highlight the fact that direct measures of child friendliness, such as the supply of public childcare – though important – appear to matter less than for instance gender equality.