Low fertility groups in developing countries

Until recently to talk about childlessness in Brazil would not find sound research grounds. Since 2005 the country has reached fertility replacement level and the newest estimates indicate that fertility continues its decline path, from 1.9 in 2010 and falling to 1.7 in 2011. Fertility schedule is diverse when compared to countries because childbearing starts early and stops also early in women’s life. In such low fertility regimes it would be expected that a high percentage of women retreat from childbearing as in several European countries. However, in average in 2010, 13% of women aged 40-49, that is, women born between 1961 and 1970, at the beginning of fertility transition, did not have any children, a figure much lower than most European countries. On the other hand, given the high inequality present in almost all socioeconomic indicators, childlessness is very different for well educated and low-educated women, for wealthier and poor . The objective of this paper is to analyze the tendencies on childlessness in Brazil looking at the socioeconomic and regional differences in order to advance some hypothesis to the future level of fertility in Brazil. The question we try to answer is whether Brazil will become a childless society or only some segments of the population will be under such regime.

While rapid fertility decline in India in the last two decades has received considerable attention, much of the discourse has focused on a decline in high parity births. However, this paper finds that, almost hidden from the public gaze, a small segment of the Indian population has begun the transition to extremely low fertility. Among the urban middle classes, it is no longer unusual to find families stopping at one child, even when this child is a girl. Using data from the India Human Development Survey of 2004-2005, this paper examines the factors that may lead some families to stop at a single child. Better understanding of the correlates of this small but distinct segment of society also provides a window into the role of demographic behaviour in shaping the future of social inequality in a society undergoing rapid transition.

Fertility remains high in Burkina Faso as a whole, but the fertility transition is well advanced in the capital city, Ouagadougou. Formal neighbourhoods, in the centre of the city, are surrounded by informal areas devoid of public services. Migrants from the countryside, less educated women, and poor families more often live in informal areas. A Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) has been settled in 2008 at the periphery of the city. The city appears to be very heterogeneous in terms of fertility: the total fertility rate (TFR) is 1.8 children per woman in the formal areas followed, as against 3.5 in informal areas.
Composition effects and differences in fertility preferences and unmet needs for family planning are not sufficient to explain this large gap, which may be due, at least partially, to an artefact. Migration to the city and, even more, migration from formal areas to informal areas, seem to be highly related to fertility behaviour, so that TFRs may be biased by selective migrations. Our aim in this paper is to model jointly migrations and fertility in order to check whether selective migrations could explain these differences (and especially the low fertility level in the formal areas).

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.