Search

Altered childbearing behaviour has been observed in many settings of violent conflict, but few studies have addressed fertility control. This is the first study to investigate empirically the relationship between local conflict and uptake of sterilization, the only contraceptive method that reflects a definitive stop to childbearing. The study is based on Colombia, a middle-income, low-fertility, and long-term conflict setting. It builds on a mixed methods approach, combining survey and conflict data with expert interviews. Fixed effects regressions show that local conflict is generally associated with an increased sterilization uptake. The interviews suggest that women may opt for sterilization when reversible methods become less accessible because of ongoing violence. Since sterilization is a relatively available contraceptive option in Colombia, it may represent a risk-aversion strategy for women who have completed their fertility goals. These findings can enlighten research and programmes on fertility and family planning in humanitarian contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a regression-based approach to the modelling of age-, order-, and duration-specific period fertility, using retrospective survey data. The approach produces results that are free of selection biases and can be used to study differential fertility. It is applied to Demographic and Health Survey data for Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe to investigate differential trends in fertility by education. Parity progression fell and the intervals following each birth lengthened between the 1970s and 2000s in all four countries. Fertility fell most among women with secondary education. In contrast to other world regions, postponement of successive births for extended periods accounted for much of the initial drop in fertility in these African countries. However, family size limitation by women with secondary education in Ethiopia and Kenya and longer birth spacing in Zimbabwe also played significant roles. Thus, birth control is being adopted in Eastern Africa in response to diverse changes in fertility preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated birth-interval dynamics in 24 African countries using data from 76 Demographic and Health Surveys conducted since 1986. Controlling for selection bias in the birth-history data using the Brass–Juárez method and regression models produced almost identical results. Birth intervals have lengthened in every country examined. This analysis uncovered a distinctive and previously undocumented pattern of childbearing that is prevalent across sub-Saharan Africa. After allowing for time trends in birth-interval length, the lengthening of birth intervals in almost every country varies little by women's age or parity. Moreover, in several countries, birth intervals are now too long to be explicable by birth spacing contingent on the age of women's youngest child. Rather, women are postponing births for other reasons. These findings offer empirical support for the idea that the fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa is following a different pattern from that observed elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using cross-sectional and longitudinal data from 3,052 rural Bangladeshi couples, we investigated the influence of husbands' and wives' fertility preferences on the likelihood of a subsequent pregnancy in the period 1998-2003. Although reproductive behaviour is relatively consistent with fertility preferences, 17 per cent of couples who reported they did not want more children in 1998 had a subsequent pregnancy by 2003. Wives in this setting appear to be more pronatalist than those in other less developed countries. Moreover, wives' rather than husbands' fertility preferences appear to have dominated over the 5-year study period. As expected, the incidence of pregnancy decreased over the study period for most couples, but increased among couples in which only the husband wanted more children. This finding suggests that wives who disagree with their husbands about having more children are either less likely to prevent pregnancy through consistent use of contraception or acquiesce to their husbands' desire for more children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the performance of three methods applicable to national-level demographic data of estimating births averted as a consequence of contraceptive practice. Two are based on the relationship between the general fertility rate (GFR) or total fertility (TFR) and contraceptive prevalence, while the third uses Bongaarts' proximate determinants (PD) model. Estimates of the number of births averted and the percentage by which the number would have increased in the absence of contraception are consistent between the GFR-based and TFR-based methods, but in general lower than the estimates generated by the PD-based method, except for a few high-contraceptive-prevalence countries. For 156 countries and areas around the world the estimated number of births that would have occurred in a recent year in the absence of contraception—the average of the estimates of the three methods—is approximately 230 million, which is more than the estimated 129 million births that actually occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using high-quality longitudinal data on 125,720 singleton live births in Matlab, Bangladesh, we assessed the effects of duration of intervals between pregnancy outcomes on infant and child mortality and how these effects vary over subperiods of infancy and childhood and by the type of outcome that began the interval. Controlling for other correlates of infant and child mortality, we find that shorter intervals are associated with higher mortality. Interval effects are greater if the interval began with a live birth than with another pregnancy outcome. In the first week of the child's life, the effects of short intervals are greater if the sibling born at the beginning of the interval died; after the first month, the effects are greater if that sibling was still alive. Many relationships found are consistent with the maternal depletion hypothesis, and some with sibling competition. Some appear to be due to correlated risks among births to the same mother. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1980 and 2000 total fertility in Kenya fell by about 40 per cent, from some eight births per woman to around five. During the same period, fertility in Uganda declined by less than 10 per cent. An analysis of the proximate determinants shows that the difference was due primarily to greater contraceptive use in Kenya, though in Uganda there was also a reduction in pathological sterility. The Demographic and Health Surveys show that women in Kenya wanted fewer children than those in Uganda, but that in Uganda there was also a greater unmet need for contraception. We suggest that these differences may be attributed, in part at least, first, to the divergent paths of economic development followed by the two countries after Independence; and, second, to the Kenya Government's active promotion of family planning through the health services, which the Uganda Government did not promote until 1995. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have argued that deliberate birth spacing may have played a role before and during the modern fertility transition. There are good historical and theoretical reasons for this view, but it has proved to be hard to demonstrate convincingly that birth intervals were in fact partly determined by attempts at deliberate fertility control. This paper suggests a method of securing evidence on the issue for married couples. The method is applied to three cohorts living in a Belgian town in the nineteenth century. The findings indicate that, even before the fertility transition, couples in the working class were controlling their fertility by deliberate spacing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use data from the nationally representative 1997 Demographic and Reproductive Health Survey to examine use of maternity services in rural China. The data indicate that roughly 60 per cent of women had at least one prenatal visit, while 40 per cent had a professionally assisted birth over the period 1 988-97. Despite China's shift from a more socialist to a more privatized health care system, use of maternity services increased over this period. These increases are consistent with the push toward integration of reproductive health into family planning that emerged after the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development and the 1995 Fourth World Women's Conference held in Beijing. At the same time, we find indirect evidence that the target-based population policy may well have exerted downward pressure on use of maternity services; differences by parity are marked and multilevel models predicting use of maternity services indicate underdispersion at the individual level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though adoption in China is known to have increased as more girls were abandoned and became available for adoption following the introduction of the country's one-child policy in the 1980's, little is known about Chinese adoption practices. This paper investigates the factors affecting adoption in China in the period 1950-87 using data from the National Two-Per-Thousand Sample Survey on Fertility and Contraception of 1988. The results show that the national adoption rate was 2.3 per cent Childless women were more likely than women with children to adopt and did not show a sex preference. Women with children by birth used adoption to secure a child of the 'missing' sex. Women who had experienced the death of a child were more likely to adopt than those who had not. Women with children may have used adoption as a strategy to circumvent the strict family planning policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inadequate data and apartheid policies have meant that, until recently, most demographers have not had the opportunity to investigate the level of, and trend in, the fertility of South African women. The 1996 South Africa Census and the 1998 Demographic and Health Survey provide the first widely available and nationally representative demographic data on South Africa since 1970. Using these data, this paper describes the South African fertility decline from 1955 to 1996. Having identified and adjusted for several errors in the 1996 Census data, the paper argues that total fertility at that time was 3.2 children per woman nationally, and 3.5 children per woman for African South Africans. These levels are lower than in any other sub-Saharan African country. We show also that fertility in South Africa has been falling since the 1960s. Thus, fertility transition predates the establishment of a family planning programme in the country in 1974. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A persistent theme in much anthropological writing is the concept of the deliberate control of population numbers by hunter-gatherers as a means of achieving moderate family size, adequate nutrition, and constrained adult mortality. An analysis of the mix of theory and field evidence that led to this conclusion finds the case not proven. On the contrary, Malthusian constraints can operate, and probably did operate, to produce a hunter-gatherer society where most adults were reasonably robust and healthy even though child mortality was high and life expectancy short. The absence of population limitation in pre-Neolithic times implies high mortality as well as high fertility, and weakens the argument positing a Neolithic mortality crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been demonstrated for many pre-industrial populations that the age at marriage, or marriage duration, influences age-specific marital fertility but the reason for this remains unclear. Among the several mechanisms that may be responsible, the following are often cited: secondary sterility or increased sub fecundity associated with parity; declining coital frequency; the age difference between the spouses; and, importantly, parity-dependent fertility control. If the latter mechanism were partly responsible for the marriage-duration effect in pre-transition populations, it would contradict the concept of the modern fertility transition as the evolution (or revolution) from parity-independent to parity-dependent fertility. The study presented in this paper investigates the relative importance of these alternative explanations. The application of multivariate Poisson regression to the fertility data from two birth cohorts in the Belgian city of Leuven shows that a linearly declining or even concave age-specific fertility pattern, disaggregated by age at marriage, does not imply parity-dependent fertility limitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While women's education continues to be strongly associated with lower fertility in India, an important feature of India's current fertility transition is the spread of contraceptive use among uneducated women. Indeed, changes in their fertility are now making the major contribution to the country's overall fertility decline. We use multilevel statistical procedures to investigate the variation in contraceptive use among uneducated women across India. The analysis suggests that, while many of the expected socio-economic variables play their part, there are also considerable diffusion effects in progress, many of which operate at levels beyond the uneducated women's own individual circumstances. For example, we find significant relationships with others' use of contraception and others' education. Mass media exposure also emerges as an important diffusion channel The multilevel analysis also reveals significant clustering of contraceptive use at different levels, much of which is accounted for by the variables included in the models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the inconsistency that has appeared in studies of the effect of women's work on fertility in less developed countries has been attributed to the varying accessibility of employment in the modern sector. The analysis presented in this paper shows that continuity of work matters more than sector of work. It also confirms that, even in a setting of low contraceptive prevalence, increased fecundity associated with the less intense breastfeeding practices of working women do not result in shorter birth intervals. The influence of women's work on fertility control is likely to be underestimated if the effects of sporadic versus continuous work are conflated, or if fecundity differentials by work status are unmeasured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1945, at the end of the Second World War, Albania had the highest fertility in Europe with an average of more than six live births per woman. However when Albania emerged from behind the 'olive curtain' in 1990, fertility had fallen to three children per woman, despite a pro-natalist environment and in the virtual 'absence of Contraception and abortion. Nevertheless, after five decades, Albania's position at the top of the European fertility league remains unchanged. This paper documents the fertility transition in Albania during the period 1950-90 and places the demographic results in the context of recent socioeconomic and cultural change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standardized rate of third births declined by over 50 percent in Austria between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s. The third birth was also postponed gradually over the years until 1991-92, after which the tempo of childbearing suddenly increased in response to a change in the parental-leave policy. This new policy inadvertently favoured women who had their second or subsequent child shortly after their previous one. We cannot find any indication that the general decline in third births can be seen as a consequence of women's increasing independence from their husbands at the stage in life we study. Furthermore, it still seems to be more difficult to combine motherhood and labour-force participation in Austria than in Sweden, which is a leader in reducing this incompatibility. These developments reflect the tension between advancing gender equality and the dominance of traditional norms in Austria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much previous work on the relationship between respondent's reported frequency of discussion with spouse about family planning and correctness of reporting spouse's approval of family planning has led to the conclusion that discussion promotes approval. In this paper, data from the 1998 Kenya Demographic and Health Surveys are used to show that a focus on the relationship between frequency of discussion and correctness of reporting partner's disapproval of family planning leads to sceptical conclusions about the effects of discussion in improving knowledge of partner's attitude or in promoting approval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the interaction between contraceptive use and breastfeeding in relation to resumption of intercourse and duration of amenorrhea post-partum. We used data from the month-by-month calendar of reproductive events from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in Peru and Indonesia. The analyses show that breastfeeding women were less likely than non-breastfeeding women to have resumed sexual intercourse in the early months post-partum in both countries. In Peru, but not in Indonesia, breastfeeding women had a significantly lower odds than non-breastfeeding women of adopting contraception. Although the likelihood of contraceptive adoption was highest in the month women resumed menstruation in both countries, about ten per cent of subsequent pregnancies occurred to women before they resumed menses. These results emphasize the importance of integrating breastfeeding counselling and family planning services in programmes serving post-partum women, as a means of enabling those who wish to space their next birth to avoid exposure to the risk of a pregnancy that may precede the return of menses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medieval and Renaissance tales are remarkable for their frank discussion of sexual practices, including birth control. Italian and French writings are the most explicit. Contraception and abortions are often treated as 'secrets', esoteric practices acquired from experts. The concealment of pregnancy is presented as an alternative form of birth control, often used after the others have failed. In the narratives, the use of birth control is mostly confined to premarital relations, although contraception by married women appears at the end of the period in a few French examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sterilization is the most prevalent method of contraception in China. Approximately half of all women of reproductive age report that they or their husbands are sterilized. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey we describe patterns of sterilization in eight Chinese provinces. With a discrete-time event history model we investigate the link between characteristics of local birth planning policy and the risk of sterilization. After controlling for parity, the risk of sterilization is highest in communities where birth planning policy is least strong as measured by exceptions to the one-child policy. These results suggest that couples with more flexibility in family building may have less control over contraceptive method use. Other factors affecting the risk of sterilization are a woman's age, parity, and whether or not she has a son. Our results emphasize the importance of taking into account multiple dimensions of reproductive behaviour when assessing one-child policy changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its inception in 1974, the South African family planning programme has been widely believed to be linked with white fears of growing black numbers. The programme has been repeatedly attacked by detractors as a programme of social and political control. Yet, in spite of the hostile environment, black women's use of services has steadily increased. Using historical and anthropological evidence, this paper delineates the links between the social and political context of racial domination and individual fertility behaviour. It is argued that the quantitative success of the family planning programme is rooted in social and economic shifts conditioning reproductive authority and fertility decision-making. State policies of racial segregation and influx control, ethnic 'homeland' politics, and labour migration of men transformed opportunities and constraints for black women and men, and altered local and household expectations of childbearing. Women came to manage their own fertility as they increasingly found themselves in precarious social and economic circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it has been often suggested, most notably by Caldwell, that high fertility in developing countries is motivated by the positive economic returns that children contribute to their parents, empirical evidence to support the hypothesis is limited. This paper describes a method of measuring the economic returns from the average child over the entire parental life-cycle. The method is then applied to detailed household economic data from Côte d'Ivoire. The results indicate that parents give more to their children than they receive and that the economic returns from children are negative. Overall, we estimate that the average child provides an annual rate of return of roughly -- 8 per cent, Our results shed light on how the returns from childbearing vary according to the age of the parents at time of birth. The results also offer a potential economic explanation of why older couples are often first to adopt modern contraception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child survival from ages one to five in Matlab, Bangladesh is related to the length of the birth-to-subsequent conception interval (BCI), family composition, health and family planning interventions, and socioeconomic conditions. The BCI relationship consists of short-term effects (related to the mother's pregnancy or the presence of a very young sibling) and long-term effects (associated with having a 6-18 month old younger sibling). Their impact is apparent at longer intervals than previously thought. Girls with at least one sister are especially vulnerable and all girls have greater risks when the next child comes along. We conclude that the health and family planning programme improves life chances of children, especially girls, directly through provision of care, and indirectly through prevention of unwanted births and longer child spacing. The differential allocation of resources to children, indicated by the strong relationship of child survival to the composition of the older sibling set, may indicate previously unrecognized receptivity to family planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to data collected by the Vietnam Living Standards Survey 1992-93, total fertility was 3.2. This level is low for such a poor country, and reflects a continued fall from 5.6 in 1979, uninterrupted by the rapid transition from a planned to a market economy. Oddly, the proximate causes of the low total fertility, including contraceptive user and abortion rates, imply a value close to 2. One explanation may be that households overstate the degree to which they use contraception. To maintain the momentum of falling fertility, a more user-oriented approach to family planning is required, offering a wider variety of contraceptive options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a survey from four rural counties, this paper examines the progression to a second birth and the sex ratio at second birth. Women whose first-born is a boy are less likely to have a second child and the sex ratio at second birth is normal, while women whose first-born is a girl are much more likely to have a second child and the sex ratio at second birth is very high. Furthermore, women's educational attainment and county of residence affect the sex ratio at second birth. The author speculates that the high sex ratio at second birth is more likely to be achieved through sex-selective abortion for women with higher educational attainment, and for women with lower educational attainment by such other means as under-reporting of female births and giving up female babies for adoption. County of residence has the greatest impact on the percentage of women who have a second birth and the sex ratio at second birth. This effect relates to the way the family planning policy is enforced in each county. The paper suggests that local family planning offices benefit financially by receiving fines and fees from couples who violate the family planning policy, and use the money to enforce the policy among those who cannot afford the fines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The determinants of contraceptive method choice in Zimbabwe are examined within the context of a structural equations model that controls for both supply and demand factors that can influence the choice. The data set used in the empirical work is the 1989 Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey. Among the policy related variables that have contributed to Zimbabwe's highly successful programme, the multivariate results reveal the importance of wife's education, husband's education, family planning messages, and the presence of a community based distributor of contraceptives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis of the 1991/2 Demographic and Health Survey showed that fertility in Tanzania is currently influenced both by contraception and sub-fertility. In the sample analysed, 25 per cent of parous women had used a contraceptive, but only 3 per cent had done so before their first child was born. Contraceptors took longer to conceive. The suppressing effect of contraception on fertility was confirmed by a multivariate analysis. There was also evidence that sub-fertility is prevalent in Tanzania. Parous women who had never used a contraceptive had relatively long waiting times to conception in Tanzania compared to women in a range of countries in Africa, Latin America, South Asia and the Middle East. If infertility in Tanzania were reduced to the level in the neighbouring country of Burundi, and all other factors remained the same, total fertility would increase by more than one child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors constructed empirical homemaking and career typologies to test the validity of Luker's contention that the abortion debate is not about the welfare of the fetus but about the status and roles of women. We found that both homemakers and career-oriented women existed in a North American sample of Mennonites. Homemakers, who were more religious, less educated and less individualistic, were significantly more pro-life, as expected. The career-oriented were more educated and more individualistic, and they were also significantly more pro-choice. Individualism was the most significant predictor of pro-choice attitudes on all six dependent variables. However, ideology in the form of the Anabaptist religious beliefs found in this sample of Mennonites, was the most consistent and most significant predictor of pro-life attitudes. Anabaptist beliefs, cradled in a homemaking context, correlated highly with pro-life attitudes on abortion, and correlated negatively with individualism, career-making, education, and socio-economic status. As Tribe's findings suggested, religion can be a strong counterforce to Luker's emphasis on status, which also correlates strongly with pro-life attitudes on abortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From its inception in 1967 to the mid 1980s, the Kenyan national family planning programme suffered from a lack of popular support and confidence within the general population, absence of active local participation at all levels and, above all, the absence of men's involvement in this patriarchal nation. This study measures the effects of men's participation in family planning decisions, and identifies the conditions which would stimulate greater participation by men in family planning decisions. The principal conclusions are that Kenyan men do participate in these decisions, take an interest in planning their families, support family planning and use contraception to achieve their goals. The recent transition to lower fertility is probably due, at least in part, to changes in men's attitudes. In particular, the study shows that lack of communication between husband and wife may be a more important obstacle to the adoption of contraception than men's opposition. Couple communication has the strongest positive influence on current contraceptive use followed by residence in regions of the country in which conformity to traditional reproductive practices is weaker (Nairobi, Central, and Eastern regions), employment in higher-status occupations, the number of living children, higher levels of education, and the wife's current age. Giving higher priority to the inclusion of men's needs and concerns in the design of family planning programmes should improve their success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a promising start some three decades ago, the application of micro-economic analysis to fertility studies has proved disappointing. It has not led to an increased understanding of fertility decisions nor to the policy insights which had been expected. This paper considers the reasons for this disappointment. It reviews briefly the development of the now dominant version of the economic approach to fertility analysis, the so-called "Chicago Model". It concludes that several basic conceptual and theoretical weaknesses of this approach have led it up a blind alley. The paper concludes with suggestions for new assumptions and approaches which may make the theory more relevant for policy programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines fertility in terms of parity or number of children in a family among three Amish church affiliations in the Greater Holmes County Amish settlement in Northeast Ohio. The Amish form a unique and distinct sub!culture in North America. Their origins go back to the Anabaptist movement around Zurich during the early sixteenth century. Despite decades of persecution and harassment by both Catholics and Lutherans, the Mennonites began to drift back to took much like mainstream societies of the time, a fact which led to dissatisfaction and a further split by those who wanted a stricter and separate lifestyle for believers. The Amish first settled in the Alsace/Lorraine area of present-day France and the Palatinate and Hesse regions of Germany, but ultimately found their way to the "New Land" of North America where they started a settlement in Southeast Pennsylvania in 1738. One significant change in Amish society during this century has been their rapid population growth.

This article contrasts two South Indian villages offering women very different employment opportunities. Specifically, in Village I nearly all women are in employment rolling beedis (crude hand-rolled cigarettes). The structure of beedi work was designed to meet the needs of the beedi contractor, but inadvertently it has provided women with substantial autonomy. In brief, women pick up the raw materials from the beedi contractor each morning, and return rolled beedi cigarettes at the end of the day. In Village II, few women work for pay. Most perform housework, and those who do work for pay are mostly agricultural labourers. More generally, this study shows that fertility decline occurs, and that low fertility can exist, in very different settings. In the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu (where both villages are located) recent statistics indicate that near-replacement level fertility has been achieved, i.e. total fertility has been estimated at 2.2 children near to the 2.1 level most commonly considered as the replacement level.

This article focuses on fertility control. This study is the latest report from a research project whose overall goal is to evaluate the performance of two indirect methods (Coale and Trussell's method (M&m) and Cohort Parity Analysis (CPA)), used in the study of fertility control in populations for which direct information on the use of birth control is lacking. Essentially, CPA compares the parity distribution of a population (the target population) with the parity distribution of a culturally and biologically similar population of women (the model population). It is assumed that women in the model population do not use fertility control. Differences between the parity distributions in the two populations are interpreted in terms of deliberate fertility control practised by the target population. In particular, CPA produces lower and upper bounds for the proportion of women in the target population who have ever effectively controlled their fertility. The CPA lower bound corresponds to an hypothetical scenario in which fertility controllers practise perfect stopping behaviour, i.e. once women have begun controlling, they do not proceed to higher parities.

With more than 22 million inhabitants, Uzbekistan is the most populous of the Central Asian republics of the former USSR. Using data from a retrospective survey conducted in 1992 among women of reproductive age, the paper examines fertility trends and determinants during the twentieth century. The analysis shows that the absence of a government-supported birth control programme and the strong pro-natalist policies of the Soviet authorities during most of the century did not affect either the onset, nor the progress of the fertility transition. The results indicate, however, that the social development programmes undertaken by the Soviet government did play a very active part in the transition as shown by the impact of education on reproductive behaviour, as well as on the very specific contraceptive mix adopted by the population after the mid- 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article it is shown that the extremely low fertility rates reported in China - well below replacement level - derived from the Chinese Survey in 1992 are false. Serious under-reporting of most recent births in China was caused by various factors, among them high pressure on officials to achieve the birth control targets set, the design of the questionnaire, and the employment of family planning workers as enumerators. The most likely value of total fertility in 1991-92 was at or slightly below replacement level, i.e. between 2.1 and 2.2 children per woman. Even after adjustment for serious under- reporting, marital fertility fell substantially between 1990 and 1992, mainly as a consequence of tighter implementation of the strict family planning programme. Rapid economic development also contributed to the fall, as many young people in the country left farming to engage in non-agricultural activities locally, or migrated to urban areas, particularly in the southern part of the country, where economic boom conditions may also have contributed to reduced or delayed fertility. In conclusion, some suggestions for future research on population policy and its implementation in China are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assesses the empirical evidence for the presence and the pattern of heterogeneity in child mortality between families in a rural area of Senegal that is apparently homogeneous with regard to the known determinants of mortality. The presence of heterogeneity is assessed by comparing the distribution of child deaths for women with a chance distribution. To weigh the relative contribution of causes of within-and between-family heterogeneity in the risk of child death to the observed pattern of clustering, detailed simulations in which empirical child-based data from the study are used, are undertaken. There are important variations in child mortality between families in this community, and the familial component in child mortality is almost entirely correlated with the size of the family. High-risk women experience repeated child deaths and repeated short birth intervals; they therefore have larger families. Heterogeneity in mortality and selective fertility, however, fail to explain the observed association between low mortality risk and small family size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents detailed evidence on fertility levels and trends in China from a survey conducted in 1992 by the State Family Planning Commission. The evidence is analyzed internally and by comparison with evidence from the Census of Population of 1990 and from two previous surveys. The results of the 1992 survey, which indicated fertility levels far below replacement during the early 1990s, have been greeted with considerable scepticism. Close attention has therefore been paid to evidence and argument bearing on the completeness of reporting of births in the survey. While the survey data probably understate fertility levels after 1990, the results for 1990 and before appear to be generally reliable. Even allowing for substantial underreporting of births during 1991-92, it appears likely that Chinese fertility did, in fact, fall to replacement level during the early 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from the Demographic and Health Survey of Bolivia, 1989, are used to examine the influence of breastfeeding and birth spacing on infant and child mortality during the first two years of life. Event-history techniques show that illness which leads to the cessation of lactation, rather than the cessation of lactation for other reasons, is the dominant factor contributing to mortality. Where lactation is separated from the effect of illness, it had no effect on infant and child survival, except during the very early months of life. Short birth intervals also increased the risk of dying during the first two years of life, as did receiving ante-natal care from a midwife. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Easterlin's supply-demand framework for the determinants of fertility is widely accepted because it has brought conceptual clarity to the study of factors that underlie the childbearing process. This model has not, however, succeeded in quantifying the fertility determinants in a convenient and generally accepted manner. The variant of Easterlin's model presented in this paper aims to remove obstacles to empirical implementation. In addition to quantifying the supply and demand factors, a new variable, the degree of preference implementation, is introduced to measure the role of costs and benefits of fertility regulation. Applications of this alternative method, to data from surveys in 18 less developed countries indicate that recent declines in fertility have largely been due to reductions in the demand for births, and to increases in preference implementation. Changes in the supply of births appear to have played only a minor role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many theories of fertility predict that mass education reduces fertility, but this effect may be produced in a variety of ways. In this paper, microdemographic data from a rural community in Nepal, in which the spread of mass education and fertility limitation is just beginning, are used to examine these links. The analyses contrast the influence of parents' and children's educational experiences on parents' fertility preferences and behaviour. The results indicate that children's schooling has a strong influence on both fertility preferences and behaviour. The effects of parental schooling are weaker, and also inconsistent in different models. These findings provide support for theories that link mass education to the onset of fertility limitation through children's schooling experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses whether Taiwan's rapid fertility transition over the period 1960-1980 was facilitated by interpersonal diffusion. Annual data on some 361 areal units are available; these support the estimation of dynamic fixed-effect models of marital fertility. The statistical models take aim at the principal empirical prediction of diffusion hypotheses: the implication of autoregressive behaviour in fertility. We test for autoregressive effects over time within areas, and also for spatial effects whereby fertility control in one geographical area has a spillover influence on another. The Taiwanese data produce clear evidence in support of within-area diffusion. The evidence for cross-area diffusion is much weaker; there is surprisingly little suggestion of city-to-country diffusion. The estimates imply that interpersonal diffusion amplified the impact of Taiwan's family planning programme on fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses recent arguments that sustained fertility decline cannot occur in circumstances of inequality, insecurity, and injustice. Naturally, these conditions are to be abhorred. However, the empirical record suggests that none of them acts as an absolute barrier to mass adoption of birth control and subsequent fertility decline. Recent trends in Bangladesh illustrate this point most vividly. One of the greatest fallacies of many fertility theories has been the assumption that there is an economic or social imperative in underdeveloped countries for couples to have many children. To the contrary, the historic norm for all societies has been an average of only about two surviving children per woman, implying an adaptation to low, not high, net fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we use a simple mathematical model to study the implications for fertility transition of the diffusion of birth-control practices through social interaction. The model proposed is dynamic and deterministic. The simulations demonstrate that interaction diffusion can make potentially large contributions to fertility declines. These contributions tend to be larger under more restrictive demand and supply conditions and, not surprisingly, in populations characterized by higher levels of social interaction about reproduction. Moreover, if social interaction is intense enough, fertility differentials fade away and fertility change resembles an imitation process. A direct implication of the model, clearly illustrated by the simulations, is that reduction in birth-control costs can stimulate greater demand for birth control. The simulations also illustrate the effects of geographical and social distances on fertility differentials, the pace of fertility transition, and the timing of the onset of transition. The strength of social-interaction diffusion is heavily conditioned by two sets of factors, which thus assume great significance as determinants of the course of fertility transition: the development of communication and transport networks, and the patterns of customary social interaction permitted by the social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I comment on the unexpected finding from primary and secondary data that, although the age at effective marriage is significantly lower in North India compared to the southern part of the country, mother's age at first birth is very similar in both regions. That is, the first birth interval is much longer in the North. Standard socio-economic and biological reasons for this difference are found to provide incomplete and unsatisfactory explanations - instead, the longer first birth interval in North India is explained in terms of the marriage and kinship patterns in this area which lead to (i) lower frequency of intercourse and (ii) long periods of abstinence when the wife visits her parental home. Both these factors operate primarily during the first years of marriage and result in a convergence of the ages at first birth in the two regions. The argument, therefore, questions the correctness of policy prescriptions which equate early marriage with an early start of childbearing, and seek to control the latter by changing the former. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regardless of whether low birth weight (2500 grammes or less at birth) is caused by intra-uterine growth retardation or pre-term birth, the condition remains one of the strongest predictors of neonatal and infant mortality. Using data from 2,234 post partum women in two hospitals belonging to the Mexican Social Security Institute, this study examines the relationship between birth intervals and low birth weight. The analysis controls for a number of potentially confounding factors, including mother's age and physical characteristics, outcome of previous pregnancy, and gestational age. The results indicate that although gestational age is a significant predictor, it has very little effect on the relationship between birth intervals and low birth weight. A birth interval 90 per cent below one year is associated with an increase in the odds of low birth weight, and an interval of 13 to 21 months is associated with an increase of 65 per cent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the extent of sexual networking in Sub-Saharan Africa. First, it was claimed that historically there had been severe punishments on women who indulged in premarital and extra- marital sexual relationships, which implied both strong moral disapproval, and the likelihood that these proscriptions had been effective in confining most of women's sexuality to marriage. The practice of parents placing their children with other guardians for fostering most markedly characterizes West Africa, where it may in some areas exceed 30 per cent, compared with significantly lower levels in East Africa, and reportedly Southern Africa. In some countries of Southern and Eastern Africa the use of contraception is now more widespread than anywhere in West Africa, and there is some evidence that fertility is falling and may fall more readily. The major solution was to permit pre-marital sexuality, but not pregnancy, or marriage enforced by it. The latter was achieved by forbidding the breaking of the girls' hymens, and thus ensuring that there were no pregnancies which led to forced marriages.

The article focuses on the interrelationship between the education of women and fertility rate. Women's educational attainment has been closely correlated with several aspects of demographic behaviour, including the reproductive process. Every additional year of mother's schooling leads to a reduction in the number of children she bears. Educated women find it easier to obtain jobs in the labour market, their earning potential is higher, and possibly their jobs are emotionally more satisfying. They, therefore, have more to lose by withdrawing temporarily from the labour force after childbirth. Better knowledge and more efficient use of birth control have probably contributed to the relatively low fertility of the higher social strata. Finally, highly educated parents may have higher aspirations for their children, which increase the cost of rearing them; or they may prefer alternative satisfactions to those yielded by children. All this may lead to delaying the first birth,or to an increased propensity to remain childless, but both the tempo and quantum of later parity transitions are also likely to be influenced by mothers' educational level. In addition, more time spent in the education system may itself lead to a postponement of the first birth. This study found a positive relationship between mothers' education and the third-birth rate . In the second parity cohorts, probabilities of a third birth for women with more than 12 years' education, an increasingly large group, were higher than for those who only had compulsory education, even though the former had begun their childbearing later. This is true for both five year and ten year probabilities and should not be seen as simply a spacing effect. Hence suggesting that education did not act as an impediment to the birth of third child in the present study.

The article describes that growing population in sub-Saharan Africa in post colonial era beginning 1960's led to changes in the landholding pattern and decreased availability of food per head. Food shortages and increasing food imports have become symptomatic of this chronic condition in which national total fertility runs uniformly in the range of six to eight children per woman. A lack of political will has thwarted national family planning programmes from sponsoring a wide-scale adoption of contraception. By the early 1980's, in only eight of the 42 countries in sub-Saharan Africa had official policies been adopted to reduce fertility through family planning or other means. The places where farming is labour-intensive and where farm surplus is made profitable by easy access to markets, the farm couple with more arable land should be able to earn extra agricultural income. This income should increase the demand for children by making children more affordable and more profitable (as sources of family labour).This viewpoint has been termed the land-labour demand hypothesis. The present study extends previous work on the relationship between the size of operational holdings and the number of children born to farm households by: (1) exploring it in an African country where arable lands are scarce; (2) using a two-stage least-squares regression model based on cross-sectional data to disentangle the assumed reciprocity of the relationship; and (3) examining how the mode of tenure of farmland might condition the relationship. The results suggest that farm size does increase the marital fertility of farm couples but the possibility of a reciprocal effect (the Reverse Hypothesis) is rejected.

The article discusses the changes in the fertility rate in Kenya. The recently published 1989 Kenya Demographic Health Survey (KDHS) constitutes the strongest evidence, but there are numerous other studies, both quantitative and qualitative, which point to declining fertility rates in Kenya. The evidence also suggests that this decline is due to rapidly changing attitudes about family size and increasing contraceptive usage. The KDHS 1989 report suggests that if young women continue to have children at current rates, they will have an average of 6.7 births in their lifetime. The total fertility has declined to 7.7 from 8.1, as was found by the surveys conducted in 1984 and 1975-77. A major cause of the decline in fertility is increased use of family planning, which has increased from 7% in 1975-77 to 17% in 1984. Now it has been increased to 27%. Modern methods of contraception account for two-thirds of all prevalence. The trend between 1962 and 1989 indicates that fertility rose, leveled off, and then fell after 1980. The article also describes several other studies including Chogoria Mission study, and Kenya voluntary sterilization programme. The contraceptive prevalence is rising in Kenya, and fertility is falling. Both trends are solidly based on major attitudinal changes by both men and women during the last 20 years. The increasing effectiveness of the family planning programme seems also to have played a major role in facilitating changed behaviour to match the changed attitudes.