Any prospects of fertility recovery in low-fertility societies?

The prime objective of present study is to analyze the dynamics of family formation in India from a marriage cohort perspective and comparison of these aspects for the two Indian states: Bihar and Kerala, the states having vast differences between them with respect to age at marriage and childbearing, progression of births etc. The family-building process is studied under following points: initiation of reproductive life and tempo of childbearing and transition from one birth to the next and so on. For studying the dynamics of progression from one birth to the next, parity progression ratio (PPR) approach is used and for recent marriage cohorts PPR’s are estimated using a technique that makes use of the truncated distribution of closed and open birth intervals. It is observed that the age at marriage has risen marginally though that is not reflected in a corresponding rise in age at first birth in Bihar. But Kerala reflects the rise of 4-5 years in age at marriage and childbearing from earlier to recent marriage cohorts. PPR’s for successive marriage cohorts are decreasing continuously with time. Probabilities of progression towards higher order births are substantially lower in Kerala as compared to Bihar for all marriage cohorts.

In the present study, an attempt has been made to estimate the fertility-inhibiting effects of the four important proximate determinants i.e. marriage, contraception, induced abortion and postpartum infecundability in Vietnam. The study is based on using data obtained from the 1997 and 2002 round of the Vietnam Demographic and Health Survey. Bongaarts model is used to determine the contribution of the proximate determinants in fertility change. The analysis shows that change in proportion of married women, contraceptive use and induced abortion are generally the main factors responsible for fertility change at the national level and rural areas in Vietnam . For urban areas, induced abortion, postpartum infecundability and proportion of marriage are the main factors responsible for fertility change during the same period whereas contraceptive use has marginal effect. The estimated TFR is probably smaller than the actual one and the difference between the two has narrowed down over the period.

Numerous studies have examined the sources, consequences, and manifestation of son preference in fertility behavior. A large proportion of these studies have focused on low fertility settings in East Asia, and especially in the skewed sex ratios of birth resulting from the practice of sex selective abortion. This paper examines the impact of son preference on individual fertility behavior in a high fertility setting, the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt).Many studies have noted the persistently high fertility rates in the oPt and have connected it to conflict. However, some anecdotal evidence exists for the impact of son preference on fertility behavior, where women are more likely to continue having children until they’ve reached the desired number of sons. This paper aims to examine the role son preference and sex distribution of current children play in fertility behavior in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), both in terms of timing of fertility and progression to subsequent parity levels using data from birth history calendars from a national health survey conducted in 2006. Parity-specific event history analysis was conducted. The results of this study show that after accounting for socio-demographic characteristics, women with a greater number of sons are less likely to have another child, irrespective of parity.

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.

According to census data,the TFR in China was 1.18 in 2010,which activated the discussion of census data quality and the real fertility level in China.It is necessary to figure out how credible are recent census data,especially the fertility data,which are the fundamental index of population and important factor closely related to the public policies.This paper focuses on assessing the fertility data quality in China’s recent censuses and methods of improving it. The household registration data and educational statistics,which are independent of census system,were used to research whether there was underreporting in census data and improve the quality of it.The results suggested there was underreporting in census data, especially in the low-age groups.The data quality of educational statistics is the best because the number of children in the educational statistics has no close relationship with the interest of local governments and reporters,which is quite different from census data.So we combined the tendency of census data and the fertility level of education statistical data to correct the missing reports in the census data both in direct and indirect method to make improvements for the quality of census data,especially the low-age group data.Finally,the estimated TFR after emendation is listed at the end of this paper.

First birth interval i.e. the interval between marriage and first birth plays an important role in determination of fertility level of the society. It is found that in Indian traditional society where use of contraceptives is rare before first birth, waiting time to first conception, which is generally nine months smaller than the interval between marriage and first birth, can be used in determination of fertility of a female. Moreover, several socio-demographic factors influence the waiting time to first conception in Indian social contexts. The objective of the study is to observe the effect of some socio-demographic characteristics on the waiting time to first conception. In the present analysis weibull regression techniques has been used over non-parametric regression techniques because it captures the heterogeneity in the phenomenon having increasing hazard better than a non-parametric regression.
The data has been used from NFHS-III for the females of the one of the most populous state of India known as Uttar Pradesh. According to analysis without heterogeneity; place of residence, religion and spousal age difference are found significant, whereas, analysis with heterogeneity explains the significance of place of residence, religion, spousal age difference as well as of age at first marriage.

The study is an attempt to focus on the decline in fertility in Odisha, one of the extremely undeveloped states of India. In spite of having widespread poverty, low level of industrialization and urbanization, agrarian economy the decline of fertility in Odisha, is quite impressive. Results based on the secondary data sources and also on a field investigation in one district of Odisha revealed that there is a clear change in the value of children due to increasing aspirations of the parents and the rise in the cost of living. There is a conscious emphasis on enhancing the quality of life across social and occupational class. This has lead to the classical quantity-quality trade off and lower family size desires. Economic benefits from children have declined. Though son as the source of old age support and care still persists; looking at the changing society and increased preference for nuclear family, majority are not sure that the son/s would actually support them in old age. Overall the cost of children has increased in relation to benefits. To meet the increased cost the strategy is to adopt a small family. For this adoption, means were provided by government sponsored family planning programme.

Non-Reproductive Life Table (NRLT) and the Reproductive Life Table Parity Distribution (RLT-PD) give the reproductive history of a hypothetical cohort of women assumed to reproduce according to the given schedule of Age-Specific Fertility Rates (ASFR) by single years of age, and is not affected by mortality and/or migration. From these Tables the following measures can be obtained – Total Fertility Rate (TFR), Intensity of Child Bearing (ICB), Ultimate Proportion of Women Not Reproducing (UPWNR), Mean age of fertility schedule (m), Expected Years of Motherhood at starting of Reproductive Life (E(15M)), Average age at First Birth (AFB), Average age at Last Birth (ALB), Percentage distribution of Births by Parity (% by Parity), Reproductive Life Table Parity Progression Ratios (RLT-PPR), average ages at different parities (Mean age at Parities), and Reproductive Life Table Closed Birth Intervals (RLT-CBI). These are standardized measures very useful for comparing fertility situations over time as well as between populations. These Tables are constructed for 14 countries around the World for which ASFR schedules were available from the United Nations Demographic Year Books. It is seen that reproduction has become concentrated in (20-34) age range and lower TFR is always associated with high UPWNR.

People's fertility intentions are related to the high sex ratio at birth (SRB) in countries and regions where son-preference is the norm. The male-biased SRB in China has had some important social consequences, such as the lack of females and the male marriage squeeze, which are likely to have serious repercussions for China's social and public safety. In order to solve the problem of gender imbalance, the Chinese government implemented a series of policies to intervene in people's fertility intentions. The objective is that by changing people's son-preference, the sex ratio at birth will be reduced, and ultimately China will achieve the goal of gender equality. This article mainly concerns empirical research on intervention in people's fertility intentions by the Chinese government, which has been carried out at the county level. By adopting a multi-method approach, this paper examines the relationship between gender imbalance governance factors and people's fertility intentions at the county level in Shaanxi province. We explore how the governance at the county level affects people's fertility intentions in China.

Modeling age specific fertility rates is of great importance in demography because of their influence on population growth. Although we have a variety of fertility models in the demographic literature, most of them do not have any demographic interpretation for their parameters. It is generally expected that models with behavioural interpretation are more universal than those without any interpretation. Even though the famous Gompertz model has some behavioural interpretation it suffers from other drawbacks. In the present work, we propose a new fertility model , which has its genesis in the generalization of logistic law. The proposed model has good behavioral interpretation, alongside having nice parameter interpretations.