Poster Session on Fertility (2)

Fertility has declined dramatically over the last 50 years in Brazil, from 5.7 children per woman in 1970 to 1.9 children per woman in 2010. Historically Brazilian fertility has always shown a young profile. Census data has shown a concentration of fertility at younger ages along the 1991-2000 decade. A reversal of this trend has become evident as the new century began, however. Both reduction of adolescent fertility and a relative increase of fertility at higher ages were responsible for changing Brazilian fertility pattern. The current debate revolves around the determinants of these changes and the possible differences between social groups. One of the hypotheses to be explored in the present scenario is whether motherhood tends to turn into an experience limited to women who share certain characteristics. The objective of this paper is to evaluate changes in the quantum of fertility as well as parity differences among women thirty years old and over. Factors such as per capita household income, participation in the labor market (working and not working in a paid job), and education level (lowest and highest levels) will be taken into account. Data from Brazilian censuses of 1970, 1991 and 2010 will be used.

South Korea has experienced rapid fertility decline and an equally striking expansion in women's education in the late twentieth century. This study aims to understand how educational differentials in fertility have evolved through the fertility transition and whether an improvement in women’s education was the main driver for fertility decline in South Korea. Using census sample data for the period 1970 - 2010, I analyze completed cohort fertility for 1926-1970 birth cohorts. This study finds that educational differences in fertility have almost disappeared over the last 40 years of birth cohorts. Despite its remarkable change, expansion in women’s educational attainment accounts for just a fifth of fertility decline during the transition. The extraordinary fertility decline in South Korea was mainly due to falling fertility in all social groups, until the cohorts reached the replacement level of fertility. This study discusses possible explanations for variation in the evolution of educational differentials during the transition.

The main purpose of this study is to explore the direction of mobility and socioeconomic differentials in fertility among foreign wives in Korea. Special attention is focused on the effects of foreign wives’ perception for upward mobility on fertility. Changes in relative economic status through marriage are referred to as the direction of mobility, as highly influential factors to explain the fertility behavior of foreign wives. An analytical model of the causal structure was set up with direction of mobility, and socioeconomic level as explanation variables for this study. The 2009 Korean National Multi-culture Family Survey was used. The study sample is composed of foreign wives (Korean-Chinese, Han-Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipina and Cambodian) under the age of 49 married to Korean men. Preliminary results of the analysis are found to be consistent with the hypothesis of the direction of mobility. The perception for direction of mobility exerts an independent effect on fertility, apart from socioeconomic and demographic variables. The results show that foreign wives who perceive their marriage as upward mobility tend to have a greater number of children.

The relationship between female education and fertility is varied and complex but extensively discussed in the literature. This article re-assesses the relationship between female education and fertility using data from Demographic and Health Surveys. Fifty-eight countries are explored. One problem with education variable in DHS data is the inconsistencies in the definition of education categories within and across countries. We harmonized the education variable to the UNESCO’s definition. The analyses conducted highlight considerable heterogeneity across total fertility rate (TFR) levels and differentials by education categories. However some empirical regularity can be isolated. For instance, we found the usual negative relationship between TFR and female education, with a monotonic pattern across education categories. Secondly, we will test whether the fertility differential is significantly different across education categories by presenting bootstrapped confidence intervals and standard errors. The final results of the analysis will be useful in predicting the fertility in the future.

So far the research in reproductive health and demographic behaviour is focused to individual level variables taking the wife or husband alone. However, ICPD conference in Cairo in 1994 has put forth demand to consider both men and women in its way to improve the health of women and children. Keeping this in view, there is ample research being carried out to study the effects of couple characteristics on health of the women and children. In India, the researches on understanding the relationship between couple characteristics and reproductive behaviour are scarce. The major objective of this paper is study the gap in couple characteristics and its impact on the fertility(children ever born).The present paper discusses three important couple characteristics namely age, education and caste differentials among the couples in India and their effects on fertility by using data from a large scale and national representative National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3, 2005-06). It is clear from the findings that age and educational gap among the couples have positive effect on their fertility implying that with the increase in age and education difference among couples, fertility also increases.

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.

The myth that young South African fathers play little role in raising their children is quickly being dispelled. Using rich longitudinal data on children (n=1,209) from the Cape Town area, we show that while only 26% of young fathers live with their children, over 60% of non-residential fathers maintain regular contact and provide financial support. Fathers’ engagement, however, is mediated by their relationship with the child’s mother (conjugal ties) and the child’s grandparents (consanguineous bonds). Men’s relationship with the child’s mother at the time of pregnancy largely determines co-residence, but has little impact on his contact with non-residential children. Strong bonds between mothers and maternal grandmothers diminish rates of fathers’ co-residence, while close ties between fathers and paternal grandmothers increases contact with non-residential children. Lastly, neither conjugal nor consanguineous bonds affect financial contributions, which are primarily dependent on men’s current economic situation. These findings illustrate the importance of conjugal and consanguineous ties and also challenge stereotypes about fathers’ relationships with non-residential children.

Using harmonised retrospective fertility and union histories from a set of nationally representative surveys from 14 European countries and the United States (the Harmonized Histories), I study how the influence of educational attainment on partnership and family formation transitions changes over the life course. Previous research is limited to either examining this influence for a very specific segment of the family life course or by only investigating single or competing transitions. By applying multistate event history models, I provide an innovative approach to understand the changing role of education over the family life course. This approach enables me to disentangle the influence of education on each and every partnership and family formation transition. As these influences come from the same model, they are directly comparable. This allows me to assess whether the influence of education changes over the family life course. I compare and contrast the results in a cross-national context for women born between 1950 and 1979.

In the context of very low to extremely low fertility levels recorded in many developed countries during the past two decades, an ongoing debate about the causes of this trend has been conducted amongst scholars and policy makers. When analyzing the results of various studies of data at either the aggregate or individual level, one important issue is worth noticing: a large number of existing analyses on the reproductive process are based largely, if not entirely, on female fertility data, whilst men are more or less absent from data gathering and analysis.
The aim is to build on the survey's theoretical papers and present the first empirical results on male fertility in the Czech Republic. For this purpose, we focus on indicators of male fertility, the preferences regarding family size and the ideal number of children from the personal and general view point. All is done by comparing male and female responses. Based on the findings on female fertility we will answer to following questions: (1) What is the level of male fertility in the Czech Republic? (2) What are the age-specific fertility rates for Czech men? (3) What are the preferences of male population with regard to family size? (4) At what age do men enter parenthood? (5) What are the main factors influencing male fertility levels?

The aim of this paper is to outline how focus group participants´ accounts and representative national quantitative survey results about reproduction and parenting interact with media and legislation texts around these topics through the discourses they draw from. We collected 1) all relevant articles in the last 10 years (2002-2011) in the most important Slovak mainstream broadsheet daily (N=1500), 2) all relevant articles in the most important Catholic broadsheet (N=132) for the last year (10/2010-9/2011), as well as 3) all relevant laws currently in force and looked for the main messages about parenting. To explore attitudes and argumentations of lay people (parents, future parents, as well as child-free persons) about reproduction and parenting we organized 15 semi-structured focus group discussions with young men (N=48) and women (N=39), aged 20-34. Seven groups were all male, four all female and four were mixed, with participants from various socio-economic backgrounds and varying levels of education. The discussions were analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis and basic critical discursive analysis. Findings from media and legislation text analysis correspond with the FG participants´ accounts especially concerning the limited role of fathers and negative stereotypes about fatherhood.