Public policies and low fertility

This paper deals with a debatable issue on the determinant sources of fertility decline in the world’s most populous country where, over the last three decades, fertility has declined consistently and substantially to the below-replacement level. Main forces shaping such fertility change and their impacts on the adjustment of population-control policy have been debated in academic circles. Taking cases of the universal two-child policy, a group of academics have asserted that China’s current low fertility is not simply a result of the one-child birth-control policy and its various permutations. Based on a closer investigation of these two-child programs, which have been perceived as an unique case of birth-control experiment for almost thirty years, this paper demonstrates that such programs are an “adapted and adjusted” but tenacious continuity from the national population control process in terms of the timing of marriage, the number of children, and the childbearing interval. Our analysis demonstrates that fertility outcomes in China are largely a function of birth rationing.

Despite a growing attention to the health care needs of peoples living with HIV/AIDS, little attention has been given to reproductive choice and the intentions of them. Moreover the desire of HIV infected people to have children has an important implication for prevention of vertical and heterosexual transmission of HIV/AIDS and the future service demands for children born from them.
The main objective of this study is to assess fertility intention and demand for family planning among peoples on active ART follow up in north Wollo, Ethiopia.
An institution based quantitative cross sectional study design supplemented with qualitative in depth interviews was conducted to assess the level of fertility intention and contraceptive preferences among ART clients in North Wollo, Ethiopia.
A large number of HIV positive women and men have a desire for children and their decision is affected by different factors such as age, marital status, sex, number of children having, and partner desire for fertility. Those not having children, married/with partner, whose partner desire fertility, females and young age group were more likely to desire children than the other group

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.

The population of Fiji consists of two major ethnic groups, Fijians and Indians. It also comprises other group, such as Europeans, Chinese and other Pacific Islanders. The 2007 census showed that there were 56.8 percent Fijians and 37.5 percent Indians, with the remaining 5.7 percent consisting of other groups.
Fiji has recently witnessed a spectacular decline in fertility but with a marked variation between Fijians and Indians. The total fertility rate among Indians dropped to 2.8 in 1986 and 2.5 in 1996. It continued to decline further, approaching below the replacement fertility of 1.9 in 2007. By contrast, Fijian fertility reached 3.9 in 1996. As with Indians, Fijian fertility also fell sharply to 3.2 in 2007.
The main objective of this paper is to examine ethnic variation in fertility using current fertility estimated directly from the census data. As the Fiji census continued to gather information on the relationship of mothers with their own children, this information has been used to estimate fertility trends over the past 15 years preceding the census by the application of the own-children method.
This paper will first examine fertility trends and differentials by ethnicity, Fijians and Indians. It will undertake decomposition analysis technique to determine the components of changes in the TFR.