Poster Session on Fertility (2)

This paper aimed to construct an index which captures transitory wealth, having the ability to explain how fertility shocks affect wealth, while avoiding the well-known issues of using direct expenditures. Data was from the wealth module of the Family Health and Wealth Study 2010, involving six peri-urban sites from 5 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Using principal component analysis, 2 indices were constructed– a fixed asset score (FA) and a “middle-class index” (MCI), assumed to represent transitory wealth. Correlations between the FA and MC indices ranged from 0.177 in Ghana to 0.764 in Malawi. Variable Inflation Factor values were between 1.04 and 2.85, affirming independent measures of permanent and transitory wealth by the 2 indices. The MCI was positively and significantly associated with surplus income in Ethiopia and Nigeria-Ibadan, and positively but not significantly in Malawi and Nigeria-Ife. The MCI was found to be a statistically significant positive predictor of self-rated wealth measure and independent of FA. Results were also robust to controls for father’s education and family size. These findings suggest that the middle-class index is a viable alternative representation of transitory wealth more sensitive in predicting how changes to factors such as family size or health affect economic well-being.

Researchers have intensively demonstrated the socioeconomic inequalities in fertility everywhere in the World. There are however limited researches on the causal effects of distance to facilities on fertility. This paper uses unique longitudinal data collected in three rural districts of Tanzania to test whether enhanced proximity to health services can reduce inequalities in fertility between rich and poor. Data on births, deaths, migrations, SES and geographic data on households and facilities have been recorded every 120 days since 1999 (n≈200,000). We will use multivariate analysis to measure the causal effects of distance to health facilities on fertility and to test interactions between distance to health facilities and maternal education and households’ SES. Initial results indicate that, from 2000 to 2010, TFR remains high around 5.3 births per woman with significant differences between poor (6.4) and rich (3.4) and between educated (2.9) and not educated (5.9). The distance to the closest health facility remained a strong determinant of fertility, even after adjusting for endogeneity biases. The development of community-based primary health care can improve health outcomes and can increase equity by offsetting the detrimental effects of low maternal education, household poverty and distance to health facilities.

Introduction: Unmet need is an important indicator of demand for family planning services. Unmet need is typically calculated for currently married women, but excluding husbands from the calculation may provide misleading estimates of demand since husbands’ preferences are related to reproductive behaviors.

Methods: This study proposes a method of calculating couples’ unmet need for family planning based on spouses’ independent fertility intentions among fecund nonusers of contraception. Demographic and Health Survey couple data from Benin, Burkina Faso and Mali are used.

Results: Across the three countries, less than half of the couples with unmet need had concordant unmet need (39.2-43.2%). A similar proportion of couples had wife-only unmet need (35.8-43.5%). A smaller proportion of couples had husband-only unmet need (17.3-21.0%).

Conclusions: Calculating unmet need based only on women’s fertility intentions overestimates couples’ concordant unmet need. Additionally, that approximately one-fifth of couples have husband-only unmet need suggests that men could be an entry point for contraceptive use for some couples. To calculate husbands’ unmet need, population-based surveys such as the DHS should consider collecting the necessary data consistently between men and women and across countries and survey years.

Despite a wide range of studies on determinants of increased sex ratio of population in Asia, little attention has been given to the role of the stopping rule in human fertility. This paper explores the hypothesis that the stopping rule has an impact on the sex ratio of last births (SRLB). We have used a new method to quantify such impact and to estimate the SRLB. This method includes a model to measure the parity stop ratios (PSR) at the male and the female last births. The hypothesis is tested using data from latest Nepal demographic health survey. The results of the model clearly present a huge impact of differential in stopping rule behaviour on sex ratio at birth. When we consider normal SRB 105, the estimates of sex ratio at last births are varying between SRB 120 to 108 across the different parities. However, we consider, differential in stopping rule in human fertility model, the sex ratio at last births are highly skewed towards male children which varying between SRB 309 to 127 across the different parities.

Education tends to influence every aspect of an individual’s demographic behaviour and outcomes including sex preferences for children. The subject of sex preference has been studied in diverse cultures because of its potential negative social and demographic consequences. This paper investigates the relationship between one’s educational level and sex preferences for children using data from the 2008 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey. Chi-square tests and binary logistic regressions were used to test for significant relationships between characteristics of individuals and preferred sex of a child. Sex preference increases at higher levels of education. Individuals in primary, middle, secondary and higher education had a more likelihood for preference for a sex of a child. Similarly, preference for a son also increases (OR) = 3%, 10.5% and 30%, for middle, secondary and the highly educated but there was less likelihood for a daughter preference among primary and secondary educated individuals (OR = 8.8% and 9.1% times). Education therefore does not necessarily neutralise sex preferences. The expectation that there would be no sex preference did not prove true hence the issue should not be addressed from an educational perspective but rather from a cultural point of view.

In Malawi, a woman’s average fertility has declined by only one birth, from 6.7 to 5.7 children per woman in the last three decades. This study examines trends in the proximate determinants of fertility in Malawi with the view to explain their relative contribution to overall fertility level using 2000, 2004 and 2010 MDHS. First, we reconstruct age period specific fertility rates that enable us to examine past fertility trends across different age cohorts for population and consistency check. Next, for each survey, the inhibiting influence of each proximate determinant on fertility is explored in detail using proximate determinants model of fertility developed by Bongaarts and Potter (1983). The apparent decline is confined to the middle age group, an indication that fertility control primarily is as result of spacing rather than limiting births. While contraceptive use has risen tremendously, the effect of the index of contraception in reducing fertility is less pronounced due to predominance use of one method, injectables. This suggests that couples in Malawi have fewer options to control their fertility. By decomposing fertility, the level of education contributed to two fifth of fertility decline. However, the composition of women with secondary education is not sufficient enough to favour fast fertility decline.

Evidence shows that the traditional binary classification of fertility intentions into either ‘spacing’ or ‘limiting’ cannot adequately explain the lengthening of birth intervals in some Sub-Saharan African populations. This phenomenon is thought to be a result of reproductive uncertainty within a population. Survey data suggests that birth interval lengthening is widely occurring in urban areas, where a myriad of reproductive expectations exist and women face increased economic and social instability. Using data from six focus group discussions conducted in the informal settlements of Nairobi, Kenya, this research examines women’s perspectives on childbearing and explores their fertility intentions in order to determine whether there is evidence of reproductive ambivalence. The results show that women desire long spaces between their births, which is a result of factors both related to, and independent of, the age of a woman’s youngest child. And, whilst they demonstrate certainty about the number of children they desire in their lifetime, it is also common to find women who have been unable to commit to these goals. Women’s intentions regarding the timing of their births and their desired numbers of children reveal reproductive ambivalence that is a result of the contradictory pressures on their households and relationships.

Since the longstanding notion that economic well-being was associated with lower fertility levels started to be called into question, there has been a renovated interest in understanding the relationship between economic hardship and fertility decisions. So far, most studies have approached the idea of uncertainty using snapshot indicators like type of contract or employment situation. However, these types of measures seem to be falling short in capturing what is intrinsically a dynamic process. In this paper I approach the concept of economic uncertainty developing an indicator of employment instability that considers the entire employment trajectory. Using sequence analysis I first classify trajectories based on their degree of instability, by considering the amount of change and the time spent in each employment/unemployment spell. The outcome is later used as an independent variable to estimate its effect on completed cohort fertility. Analyzes are performed for French men and women using the first two waves of the Generations and Gender Surveys. Although France is characterized by strong family policies, we expect employment instability to have a significant effect on fertility decisions, especially in the case of couples that struggle to reconcile family and career aspirations.

Gender factor is the driver of gender transition in fertility in low-fertility countries. Prospects of demographic development and maintain a relatively high fertility depends on the availability of gender policy, and especially the involvement of men in child care and household work. Gender equity concept is also relevant to explaining fertility behavior of Russian population. To develop gendered demographic policy in context of men involving in childcare and domestic tasks it is necessary to investigate which patterns of male participation in child care we have in present time and which men have a more egalitarian or more traditional family behaviour in Russia. This paper is devoted to the role of men in the childcare and children’s upbringing in Russian families. The goal of the research is to figure out the factors determining the men’s participation in the children’s upbringing and care in Russian families and to draw the picture of the socio-demographic profiles of egalitarian and traditional men using satisfaction of partners with child care distribution. Data: Macrodata: Rosstat Time Use Survey 2010. Microdata: Gender and Generation Survey (GGS Russia); Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS). Methods: multivariate, factor, cluster analysis.

Since 1976, when Nepal recorded 6.33 TFR, fertility started declining slowly until 2000. After the new millennium, fertility decline was much faster than ever. During the period of last 35 years Nepal observed a decline of 3.73 births of which more than 2 births reduction was in last 15 years. This study argues besides the conventional factors of fertility decline - socioeconomic development and organized family planning- women's autonomy in decision making has important role to sustain the fertility decline in Nepal.
Using data from NDHS 2001, 2006 and 2011, the study concludes that women's autonomy is significantly influenced by the socio-economic characteristics, particularly women's education and employment while husband's employment and education have negative impact. It also concludes that women exercising autonomy in decision making of household and individual affairs tend to prefer smaller number of children, one of the reasons of secular fertility decline. The study raises some methodological questions on the indicators used by DHS and on theoretical construct of women's autonomy. The indicators used by DHS are insufficient to capture women's autonomy dynamics. Likewise, as the women's socio-economic status improves they tend to make joint decision which questions on the theoretical construct of autonomy.