Any prospects of fertility recovery in low-fertility societies?

This study examines three aspects of men’s reproduction – reproductive attitudes, fertility intentions, and fertility outcomes. We seek to contribute to research that so far mainly addressed low levels of fertility by focusing on women’s employment and delayed childbearing. Sweden provides a unique context because of its explicit policies aimed at promoting gender equality in both work and family realms. We will seek to address the role of career goals, leisure goals, and gender role attitudes on Swedish men’s fertility intentions and behavior. We use longitudinal data from the Swedish Young Adult Panel Study (YAPS). Our results indicate that young Swedish men think sufficient income, suitable housing, and a good partner are important in planning for children. Yet these preconditions, except for having a suitable partner, are seen to be fulfilled for only a minority of men. These perceived economic conditions have an impact of fertility intentions as those with sufficient income and suitable housing are less likely to intend to delay having children than their less well-off counterparts. Next we will examine the impact of these factors on fertility outcomes, and also address the role of career and leisure goals explicitly.

The Southeast Asian countries are at different stages of demographic transition. Within each country, fertility level varies widely across the socioeconomic groups, resulting from differentials in age at marriage, contraceptive use, and probably induced abortion. This paper attempts to examine factors influencing the fertility trends and differentials in Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
The near replacement fertility level achieved in Indonesia and rapid fertility transition in Cambodia were mainly attributed to the successful implementation of national family planning program. The pace of fertility reduction in the Philippines has been relatively modest, partly due to the low use of modern contraception. While rising age at marriage is an important proximate determinant of fertility in each of these countries, it is less important in explaining the different level of fertility across the three countries since the singulate mean age at marriage is about the same in all three countries (about 23 years around year 2005).
Urbanization, social changes and wider use of contraception have resulted in continuing fertility decline in these countries. However, improving women’s education and status is crucial in reducing the high fertility level among some groups of the population, in order to achieve greater economic progress.

Establishing a link between fertility prospects and aggregate fertility is a widespread concern, with most of the literature dating from the 1970s-80s. Long time-series on fertility preferences are however scarce, and first attempts are made here of looking at the correlation between cohort aggregate preferences and actual cohort completed fertility on a series of definitions of fertility prospects (intended number of children, ideal and societal ideal family size). We use a set of French surveys: past surveys on demographic situation (Ined), more recent surveys on family (Ined/Insee/Inserm), and a yearly time-series of ideal family size (CREDOC). Mean “societal” ideals are found the closest to completed cohort fertility in terms of level. We use the only consistent time-series on ideals (CREDOC) in order to model the link more precisely. In terms of trends, it appears that completed fertility and ideal family size are quite linked together, while ideals do not predict accurately period total fertility rate.

This paper analyses the causes of geographical fertility differences within metropolitan areas, by focusing on the metropolitan regions of Barcelona and Madrid. Our main hypothesis is that fertility differences among municipalities would be based on two main elements: 1) the degree to which the suburbanization process has developed –which, in the Spanish case, has rapidly expanded and has been highly selective– and 2) foreign immigration’s local level impact. Results from the descriptive analysis show that despite regional fertility levels have become increasingly similar within Spain, there are increasingly strong fertility variations within Barcelona and Madrid metropolitan regions. While the core cities have low, late and more stable fertility levels, the suburban periphery municipalities have earlier and higher fertility levels. This would confirm the fact that different areas within the metropolitan regions are increasingly specializing in a particular function –productive or residential. These settlement preferences are in turn dependent on nationality and the life cycle stage. Factor analysis using Movimiento Natural de la Población (vital statistics) data allow us to investigate the causes of such differences.

Population growth is an issue of concern in most of the developing countries. India is a large (population-wise) developing country with cultural, social, economical and behavioral diversities. In many studies regression or indirect estimation procedure has been used to find out the fertility variation in the population. Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state and it plays a very crucial and important role in population growth of India. In this study a recent pattern of number of births has been analyzed considering the currently married females of Uttar Pradesh who has delivered at least one child in last five years. Parametric regression model is used in order to find out the current scenario of the fertility behavior of the females. Number of birth delivered by a female in last five year has been taken as predicted variable and some socio-economic and demographic variables have been taken as predictor variables to explain the reproductive phenomenon of the females in the traditional society of Uttar Pradesh. Findings clearly show that place of residence, age, number of existing children and their sex composition, wealth index, castes/religion are emerged as a potential factor to explain the phenomenon consider in this study.

When a pregnancy comes sooner than desired or comes at a time when the mother had wished for no more children, the complexities associated with birth of that child are more likely to be perceived as complications. National Family Health Survey data (2005-2006) has been used to study the extent of association between pregnancy intentions and duration of breastfeeding. Pregnancy intention has been classified as pregnancies that are intended and unintended (mistimed or unwanted). A considerable percent (22 percent) of pregnancies in India are unintended. Hence, it becomes important to examine the impact of unintendedness on breastfeeding practices. However, it has been seen from the analyses that children born out of unintended pregnancies are more likely to have prolonged breastfeeding duration as compared to children born out of intended pregnancies. The KM curves prove this fact. Hence, pregnancy intention is not an important factor determining duration of breastfeeding in India.

Researchers in India and elsewhere have also noted that fertility declines over the past decade or so have intensified pressure on women to act to achieve their desired family sex composition within the confines of a smaller family size. This study examines the hypothesis that families in Uttar Pradesh want more sons than families elsewhere, and also examines how the sex composition of women’s current parity influences both fertility desires and full range of reproductive actions women may take to realize them including temporary contraception and sterilization. The analysis is based on NFHS-III dataset using 1457 and 1794 currently married women for parity two and three respectively.
The result indicates son preference go beyond a singular preference for male children. Families may want one daughter, very few want more than that and most definitely want at least one or two sons. Women with this combination are 42% less likely to report having wanted another child relative to those with three girls. women with two or more boys and no girls or those with two girls and one boy are significantly and considerably less likely to want another child (64% and 84% less likely, respectively.

To estimate whether and to what extent birth interval is associated with cesarean delivery. This is a retrospective cohort study of 3814 women who delivered a child during 60 month period. Women were grouped by their preceding birth interval in two groups i.e. less than 5 years and more than or equal to 5 years, and the rate of cesarean delivery was determined for these groups. The independent association of inter birth interval with cesarean delivery was further estimated after controlling for potential confounding factors using logistic regression. Women with an inter birth interval of less than 5 years had a cesarean delivery rate of 6.13. Women with inter birth intervals of 5 or more years had cesarean delivery rates of 9.85 (p<0.004). After controlling for potential confounding factors such as age, education and standard of living, the corresponding odds ratio (and 95% confidence intervals) for cesarean delivery for 5 year or more year inter birth interval group, in reference to the less than 5 years group, was 1.686 (1.119–2.542). A longer inter birth interval is independently associated with an increased risk of cesarean delivery.

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.

While men have always received more education than women in the past, this gender imbalance in education has now turned around. For the first time in European history, there are more highly educated women than men reaching the reproductive ages and looking for a partner. I expect that this will have profound consequences for the demography of reproduction because mating practices have always implied that men are the majority in higher education. These traditional practices are no longer compatible with the new gender distribution in education. The objective of this paper is to formulate hypotheses about the consequences for reproductive behaviour in Europe. I expect the following causal chain between the reversal of the gender imbalance in education (RGIE) and fertility: RGIE creates a new, education specific mating squeeze that affects the process and expected pattern of assortative mating, which in turns affects the timing, probability, and stability of union formation, which eventually is expected to have implications for fertility. Each of the links in this chain are discussed in detail.