Poster session on Population and policy challenges in East Asia

China has the world’s most stringent family planning policy with integrated, usually coercive approach to implement it. However, according to China’s 2005 National 1% Population Survey, the national rate of unauthorized births averaged at 18.6% over the last 20 years. How well has China's family planning policy worked? What are the causes for noncompliant fertility behaviors? This paper studies the patterns and determinants of unauthorized fertility behaviors in China from macro-, meso- and micro-perspectives using the 2005 population survey data and logistic regression analysis. Results show that the rate of unauthorized births differs considerably across China and between policy types. Rural one-child policy areas had the rate as high as 37.7%, contrasting to a rate of 12.6% in urban one-child policy areas. Strong son preference is the main and direct factor to bring about the resistance to birth control. While socioeconomic development contributes to quelling resistance to the family planning program, the relationship is not simply linear. Family income has a U-shape effect on the probability of unauthorized fertility behaviors, and many individual characteristics like education and age at first birth also have significant influence on the risk of unauthorized births. Theoretical and policy implications are also discussed.

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.

Declining mortality and fertility has resulted in a proportionate increase in old age (60+) population in rural India, largely characterized by limited economic resources, poor health status and inadequate use of health facilities that heightens their vulnerability to various ill-health outcomes. Using data from 60th round of National Sample Survey (NSSO-2004), we examine the socio-economic differentials in self-reported ailments among rural elderly population. Employing Verbruse and Jette’s (1994) Disability Framework, we test the association between socio-economic inequalities and selected health outcomes- active pathology, impairment, functional limitation and disability. Result shows that elderly from richest, rich and middle quintiles were more likely to report various health ailments than the poorest one. Economic inequalities were largest in functional limitation followed by disability. Age advancement has a profound impact on physical impairment, which could be explained by the living arrangement and working status of the elderly. Therefore, in order to ensure healthy aging, there is an urgent to establish equitable old age security schemes providing physical, social as-well-as economic support to the elderly population, particularly among economically disadvantageous groups in rural India.

In view of population size, scarcity of resources, existing poverty, insufficient health facilities and the absence of a social security system, ageing is going to be a major problem in Bangladesh. Thus, this paper examines how many years the elderly expect to be in good health, and what are the correlates of self-rated health (SRH). The data used in this study come from 896 elderly from Rajshahi district in Bangladesh and from United Nations projected population figures. Results show that individuals at age 60 expected about 41 percent of their remaining life to be in good health, while individuals at age 80 and above expected only 21 percent of their remaining life to be in good health. Having exercised during the 6 months prior to the survey was the single most important correlate of SRH: odds ratio = 5.49 (4.03-7.47) without any adjustment. While rural-urban differentials, gender inequality and some health decline in old age are inevitable, four factors (exercise behaviour, sufficiency of income, physical limitations, and facing abusive behaviour) are to a certain extent modifiable and therefore provide a potential for improvement in SRH and in healthy life expectancy in Bangladesh.

Fertility rates by single year of age of mothers are not available for India. Therefore, they have to be estimated from five year age groups using appropriate statistical method. The Sample Registration System (SRS) in India has published fertility rates by five-year age groups, 15-19 to 45-49 for the twenty large states and India from 2005 to 2009. A comparison of these rates with similar estimates by the United Nations (2010) indicates that the SRS data suffer from underestimation in early reproductive ages and overestimation in the older reproductive ages. The SRS five-year fertility rates, therefore, have to be adjusted first before embarking on the estimation of single year rates. Thus, the objectives of the paper are: (1) correct the five - year data on fertility rates; (2) develop single year age-specific fertility rates by using the Pearson Curve, Types I / III/ and other interpolation methods : Beers and Quadratic Spline; and (3) discuss the rationale and application of the selected Pearson Curve for projecting the number of births. The final outcome will be a set of adjusted single year fertility rates for the large states in India for each year, 2005 to 2009.

Using the data from the waves of the survey “Well-being of Elderly in Anhui Province, China” conducted in 2001-2006, this study examines gender differences in medical expenditure of the rural elderly and its effect factors. The results show that proportion of older women who have medical expenditure is higher than that of older men, however, the former spend less than the latter. Tobit models for males and females separately are employed to identify gender differences in the effect factors of medical expenditure of older people. The results show that the older men's medical expenditure dependents on the predisposing factors, while the older women's expenditure relies on the enabling factors such as family and intergenerational supports, which reveals that older men tend to rely on their own economic conditions to meet the medical needs, while older women tend to rely on the financial support from their families. These results tell that, due to the cumulative disadvantages lasting a lifetime, with even worse health and greater demand for medical services, the older women’s medical expenses are relatively less than older men’s. Thus, the elderly vulnerable groups like older women should be of greater concern to policy-makers in future.

The study is based on the Indonesia 2005 Population Intercensal Survey covering older persons aged 60 years and above in 388 selected districts. The study finds a wide range of percentage of being in good health, from 7% to 68% across districts. Sex, type of districts, and location of the districts are taken into account in the analysis. It shows that the corresponding percentage is generally lower among female elderly population than male elderly. Those living in urban districts, cities, tend to report better health status than those in regencies. Cities located in Java/Bali islands have the highest percentage of elderly in good health than other districts in other islands. Functional capacity varies across districts. Percentage of reporting “no help needed” in functioning physical activities ranges from 30% to 96%. In addition, this study also takes into account different types of ADLs (getting dressed, using toilet, taking a bath, and eating) and IADL (preparing meal). The regression analysis shows that good self-reported health status (SRHS) is significantly associated with overall functional capacity. However, good SRHS is statistically significant with difficulty in bathing and eating, as well as with difficulty in preparing meal.

To understand and to measure the economic pressure caused by population ageing is a great difficulty in demography. Moreover, whether and how population ageing can be effectively intervened and regulated is a common concern and debatable issue among the policy makers and demographers. This paper is going to make a probe into these issues with China as an example. By adopting innovative approaches, the author makes quantitative analysis and international comparative study of the economic pressure of population ageing of China between 1980 and 2050. On the basis of these studies, this research tries to explore the necessity, feasibility and a possible path to regulate China’s economic pressure of population ageing by relying on its birth control policy.

The approach adopted in this research to measure the economic pressure of population ageing is the Ageing and Economics Coordination Index (AECI for short) proposed by the author in 2009. The conception of the AECI has made the economic pressure of population ageing quantifiable and comparable.

The data of this research are generally quoted from the World Bank, the United Nations, and the 2010 national census of China.

This study will contribute to a better understanding of the unique “China Paradigm” in population ageing.

This study investigates the availability of children as intergenerational care givers for elderly parents. Children are the elderly’s main resources and care givers due to increasing number and proportion of ageing population with insufficient social welfare in Thailand. However, an evidence of intergenerational support within families is barely found, while the declining potential support ratio indicating the vulnerable social support of tax system was reported. This study, therefore, analyzed longitudinal data collected in a rural area in the northeastern Thailand to show the availability of children living with their parents in the village by comparing between two generations. Matrix operation through kinship network was deployed to find the relationship between female elderly parents and their children. In addition, multivariate regression was used to predict factors affecting the availability of children living in the village. A result revealed that, in 2000, the percentage of women with son living in the village was not different between women in generation 1 and 2, but the percentage of the generation-2 women with daughter dramatically dropped about 18 percent. Most existing children in the village are in school age or work in the agricultural sector, which has the highest rate of out-migration from this region.

Some Asian countries have experienced increasingly surplus of men in the marriageable age cohort. The existing literature on its impacts uses aggregate sex ratio. However, the relevance of skewed sex ratio to family decisions mainly relies on how social interactions in the reference group convey this pressure. This paper adopts a unique social network data, collected from households' long term spontaneous gift exchange records, with a primary census-type household panel data from Chinese villages to explore the prevalence of men's localized pressure to get married. We focus on comparing families with their first-born child a boy versus a girl and distinguish the network spillover effect from the direct effect. The spatial econometric decompositions suggest that the pressure mainly originates from a few friends with unmarried son and are faced with unbalanced sex ratios in the friendship networks, though own village sex ratio and having unmarried son also affect parental risk-taking behavior. We also find similar patterns for parental working hours, their likelihood to engage in entrepreneurial activities and decision to migrate. Since the sex ratio imbalance in China will probably worsen in the next decade, disentangling the real sources of marriage market pressure may help design targeting policy to improve parental well-being.