Contrasting fertility patterns and explanations: East Asia compared with other low-fertility regions

Family policies in East Asian countries lag compared to their western counterparts; the International Labour Organization recommends no less than 14 weeks of paid maternity leave and European Union members provide much more generous parental leaves. However, typical leave in most East Asian countries falls below 12 weeks. Incidentally, East Asian countries collectively rank the lowest when it comes to fertility rate; Singapore marked .78, Hong Kong 1.09, Taiwan 1.10, South Korea 1.23, and Japan 1.39 in 2012. While there are many factors that affect fertility rate, this paper looks at whether family policies influence fertility trends in five East Asian countries above from 1980 to 2010 using data collected from national statistical institutes and organizations such as the OECD and ILO. Policy measures focused are (1) parental leave arrangements; (2) childcare services; and (3) financial supports. The study uses ordinary least squares regression, including country and year fixed-effect variables, in addition to taking into consideration other important control variables taken from previous research. Since studies on East Asia are significantly scarce, though previous literature overall indicates the positive impact of family policies on fertility rate, similar effects in East Asia are questionable and thus worth investigating.

Most of demographic theoretical explanations could be divided along the lines of two major premises of social science: first, the modernization theory and, second, institutional approach. According to the first explanation, demographic transitions are staged, irreversible, universal across space and time, progressive, lengthy, Europeanized and homogenizing. Major variants of demographic transition theories (first and second) fit these very premises. In opposite to it, the institutional approach emphasizes the major impact of the local (parochial) specifics in defining the demographic developments including fertility dynamics.
Demographic developments in the world provide a rich evidence for testing these largely competing explanations. Demographic developments in the countries of Eastern Asia serve as a good testing ground. The uniqueness of these countries is that they combine rapid modernization with the lag in changing of the gender roles. That leads to the pattern of fertility – one of the lowest in the modern world. The paper elaborates on developments in the region, provides alternative explanations of the demographic developments in the region and concludes on the possible contribution of the developments’ analysis to the validity of both major theoretical explanations.

Good nutrition means “maintaining nutritional status that enables us to grow well and enjoy good health”. The nutritional status of women is important both for the quality of their own lives and the survival and healthy development of their children. Nutritional status of women in India is posing a serious challenge not only for nutritional policy but also for socio-economic and welfare policies. Therefore, this study assesses the determinants of nutritional status and anaemia level among women in Maharashtra.
Data and Methodology: Third round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3, 2005-06) data, descriptive statistics such as multivariate statistics such as multinomial logistic regression are used for the purpose of this study.
Results and Conclusion: In Maharashtra half of the women are not anaemic. A close association was found between low body mass index of the women who are illiterate, not involved in economic activity. This study revealed that women of low economic status households have the highest prevalence of under nutrition, majority of women fall under this group are undernourished and severely anaemic. This may be due to food insecurity in these households that negatively impacts the nutritional status of women, in particular, and the other household members in general.

As other East Asian societies, Taiwan has confronted a remarkable decline in the number of births during the last decades. The more recent decline is largely attributed to a significant increase in the educational attainment of women, along with improved employment opportunities and higher wages for women in this region. It has been argued that both nuptiality and marital fertility have contributed to the recent fertility decline in Taiwan, and their relative importance actually varied over time. For younger cohorts, the changing preference for ideal partner/spouse has emerged as a priority concern in the decision-making process of union formation. In addition, the declining fertility rate is also due to perceived difficulty in raising children, particularly by working mothers. Using data from Taiwan’s Vital Statistics and Household Registration Records between 1976 and 2010, firstly, we will reconstruct completed fertility rates for female birth cohorts born before 1960 and model the CFRs for younger cohorts. Next, we will illustrate the extent to which changes in first marriage and childbearing behavior after marriage have contributed independently to the decline in fertility since 1970s. Based on these results, we will explain contemporary differences in cohort fertility and discuss the possibility of recuperation.

Increases in childlessness and a shift of childbearing to later age are common features of countries with low fertility. The rise of childless women and diversified fertility behaviors indicate that childbearing is concentrated onto population segments. If births are unequally distributed, particularly toward disadvantaged groups, social inequality may be intensified at least with respect to social reproduction. Despite widespread interest in low fertility, concentration of reproduction remains relatively unexplored. This study explores concentration of reproduction in South Korea, one of the lowest-low fertility countries. Based on cohort analysis of Korean Census samples data, I look at concentration ratios (CRs) in cohorts of women born in 1926-70. To be specific, I investigate the relationship between change in CRs and fertility transition and how it differs across women’s educational attainment in South Korea. The results of this study suggest that as completed fertility reaches below replacement level, the relationship between CR and fertility level changes from negative to negative around replacement level of completed cohort fertility. This study contributes to finding a general relation between CR and fertility level and expand its discussion to East Asia.

While there has been a growing literature on low fertility in developed Western countries, little is known about the phenomenon in the East. It is a question of great interest whether findings from the former apply to the very different context in the latter. Using 2008, 2010, and 2012 waves of the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families, first, this paper provides up-to-date pictures of Korean women’s childbearing. We describe whether women planned to have a child in 2008, whether they gave birth between 2008 and 2012, and how the two fertility outcomes are related. Next, we examine what determined the outcomes with logit regressions, focusing on women of parity one. As for determinants, we pay attention to husbands’ and parents’ help with domestic labor and use of formal childcare services.
Results showed fertility intentions were good predictors of fertility behavior. While both fertility intentions and actual childbearing were remarkably low among women with two or more children, parity progression of women with one child seemed relatively malleable. Gender inequality in division of domestic labor was striking. Husbands’ help had a positive impact on fertility intentions. Use of formal childcare affected fertility behavior positively. These findings have implications for other Asian countries with low fertility.

Much research has been done on the influence of ideational factors on family formation in countries of Europe. According to the second demographic transition theory, due to an increase in economic affluence and social security, people have a strong preference to self-actualization and individuation. As a result of this, cohabitation and divorce gain popularity, while early marriage and childbearing lose popularity in Europe. However, few studies have been conducted regarding the impact of value-orientation on family formation patterns in Japan.

This paper attempts to examine the influence of ideational factors on fertility behavior in Japan. Data come from the Japanese Generations and Gender Survey. Since the survey is a panel survey, we can scrutinize the causal relation between attitudes and childbearing behavior. Multivariate analyses including latent class hazard analysis have been carried out to examine the effect of attitudes on fertility behavior. Results showed that attitudinal factor plays an important role in determining the pattern of childbirth in Japan.

Recent surveys show that cohabitation is gradually spreading in East Asia while it largely remains to be a precursor to marriage rather than an alternative. This study presents the results of comparative analysis of the effects of premarital cohabitation on the timing of family formation in Japan, South Korea, Singapore, France, Sweden and the U.S., drawing on microdata from the 2009 Survey on Comparative Study of Family Policies in East Asia and the 2005 Comparative Opinion Survey on Declining-Birthrate Societies, which were conducted by the Section for Measures against Declining Birthrate, the Cabinet Office of Japan.
The proportional hazard models were applied to the microdata for each sex of six countries in the 2009 and 2005 surveys. Dependent variables include the hazard of first marriage, first birth, second birth and third birth. Independent variables include education, urban-rural residence (citizenship and ethnicity for Singapore), premarital cohabitation experiences and the interaction of higher education and premarital cohabitation experience.
In sum, the positive effects of premarital cohabitation on the timing of marriage and childbearing tend to be found in East Asia and the West except for a few cases. But the precise effect depends on survey years, countries and gender as well as dependent variables.

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.

No demographic theory could predict such changes as emergence of lowest-low fertility in Southern-Eastern Europe and is expansion to Eastern Asia. While the TFR of Japan hit the bottom at 1.26 in 2005, Korea recorded 1.08 in 2005 and Taiwan 0.895 in 2010. An ad-hoc interpretation is that such extremely low fertility was caused by the Confucian family pattern. While Europe and Japan are classified into the offspring of feudal family, the Confucian family pattern is very different from Northern-Western European family pattern. While below replacement fertility is natural response to socio-economic changes in post-modern era, the impact on fertility differs by family patterns. It could be said that the more distant the family pattern is from Northern-Western Europe, the lower the TFR goes down. A cultural deterministic view is presented referring to comparative studies on history, civilization and value changes.