Determinants of fertility decline in China, 1981: Analysis of intermediate variables

Abstract

This study examines the proximate determinants of fertility in China by making use of the data collected by the One‐per‐Thousand Sample Fertility Survey of 1982. The results indicate that the most important inhibitor of potential fertility is deliberate control. Its contribution to fertility change has been far greater than all other proximate determinants. The marital structure of the population is also an important factor, while lactational infecundability and induced abortion are relatively unimportant. Comparative results by using data from the In‐depth Fertility Survey conducted in Shanghai Municipality, Hebei and Shaanxi Provinces in April 1985 agree well in the ranking of the four intermediate factors. The findings point to successful family planning program and government population policies, which propelled the fertility transition to a substantial degree. Further research needs and policy implications of the results of the study are discussed.     

Rapid fertility decline in Iran: analysis of intermediate variables

The remarkable decline in fertility in Iran, which saw the total fertility rate fall from 7 children per woman in 1986 to 2 in 2000, has received only limited analysis in the demographic literature. Using the 2000 Iran Demographic and Health Survey and Bongaarts' age-specific fertility model, this paper examines the role of the major proximate determinants of fertility in bringing about the rapid decrease in fertility in Iran. The analysis indicates that contraception had the largest effect on fertility, accounting for 61% of the reduction in fertility from its theoretical maximum. The fertility-inhibiting effect of marriage patterns accounted for an additional 31% reduction, and was most important among the young. Further analysis of contraceptive behaviour suggests that the current period fertility rate of 2.0 children per woman is an outcome of a synchronization of delaying and spacing of births among younger women with stopping of childbearing among women in the middle and late reproductive ages. The policy implications of the results are discussed.     

Stall in fertility decline in Eastern African countries: regional analysis of patterns,determinants and implications

We use data from the Demographic and Health Surveys to examine the patterns of stall in fertility decline in four Eastern African countries. Contrary to patterns of fertility transition in Africa that cut across various socio-economic and geographical groups within countries, we find strong selectivity of fertility stall across different groups and regions in all four countries. In both Kenya and Tanzania where fertility decline has stalled at the national level, it continued to decline among the most educated women and in some regions. While fertility has remained at pre-transition level in Uganda over the past 20 years, there are signs of decline with specific groups of women (especially the most educated, urban and those in the Eastern region) taking the lead. For Zimbabwe, although fertility has continued to decline at the national level, stall is observed among women with less than secondary education and those in some of the regions. We link these intra-country variations to differential changes in socio-economic variables, family planning programme environment and reproductive behaviour models. The results suggest that declines in contraceptive use, increases in unmet need for family planning, increasing preferences for larger families, and increases in adolescent fertility were consistently associated with stalls in subgroup fertility across all four countries. These results are consistent with models that emphasize the role of declines in national and international commitments to family planning programmes in the premature stall in sub-Saharan fertility transition.     

Determinants of cumulative fertility in Kenya

This paper analyses the effects of age at first marriage, level of education, place of residence, marriage disruption, religion, contraceptive use, and work status on cumulative fertility in Kenya, using data from the 1977-78 Kenya Fertility Survey. Age at first marriage is the main determinant of cumulative fertility, but there are significant effects of level of education and marriage disruption. Place of residence is only significant for the Coast province. The implication of the findings is that to promote any real decline in fertility, emphasis should be placed on providing higher education and work opportunities for young women as an alternative to early marriage.     

The cultural evolution of fertility decline

Cultural evolutionists have long been interested in the problem of why fertility declines as populations develop. By outlining plausible mechanistic links between individual decision-making, information flow in populations and competition between groups, models of cultural evolution offer a novel and powerful approach for integrating multiple levels of explanation of fertility transitions. However, only a modest number of models have been published. Their assumptions often differ from those in other evolutionary approaches to social behaviour, but their empirical predictions are often similar. Here I offer the first overview of cultural evolutionary research on demographic transition, critically compare it with approaches taken by other evolutionary researchers, identify gaps and overlaps, and highlight parallel debates in demography. I suggest that researchers divide their labour between three distinct phases of fertility decline—the origin, spread and maintenance of low fertility—each of which may be driven by different causal processes, at different scales, requiring different theoretical and empirical tools. A comparative, multi-level and mechanistic framework is essential for elucidating both the evolved aspects of our psychology that govern reproductive decision-making, and the social, ecological and cultural contingencies that precipitate and sustain fertility decline.     

Determinants of malnutrition in Senegal: Individual, household, community variables, and their interaction

The relationship between poverty and nutrition is a two-sided one: on the one hand, economic growth (which is generally associated with an eradication of poverty) leads to reduced malnutrition. On the other hand, nutrition is one of the key ingredients for human capital formation, which in turn represents one of the fundamental factors of growth. There are numerous studies that show the correlates of malnutrition using both household- and community-level variables. However, few of these studies allow for the potential endogeneity of community infrastructure or indicate their interplay with characteristics of the mother. The current study considers the socio-economic determinants of child malnutrition and investigates how programs compensate for the increased risks facing young mothers and their children or substitute for a low social status of the mother in the household. The empirical results show that children of mothers giving birth at a young age are disadvantaged in terms of their anthropometric status. Interaction effects of the presence of a non-governmental organization (NGO) or a health post in the village with characteristics of the mother stress the important role played by these institutions in helping disadvantaged mothers overcome their difficulties. These findings have implications for efficient program design and represent a further step towards gaining an improved understanding of the complex determinants of child (mal)nutrition.     

Determinants of fertility in Nepal: applications of an aggregate model

Bongaarts aggregate model of the proximate determinants of fertility is applied to data from the 1976 National Fertility Survey in Nepal. Breastfeeding is shown to be the most important limiting factor, resulting in a reduction of about 6 children per woman. Decline in the duration of breastfeeding by 1/4 would increase fertility by 1 additional child per woman. The temporary separation of spouses due to migration is conjectured to be the 2nd most important fertility inhibiting factor, not explicitly accounted for in the standard model. Results are presented for the 3 major ecological regions, urban-rural residence and educational attainment of women. High nuptiality and virtually no contraceptive use in Nepal produce age-specific fertility rates very close to a natural fertility pattern. Total average interval between births is 36 months; about 18 months are solely due to breastfeeding, the remaining months to combined effects of gestation, waiting time to conception, intrauterine mortality and post-partum infecundability. As urbanization increases and pace of modernization becomes more pronounced, the duration of breastfeeding is susceptible to decline.     

Greater than expected fertility decline in Ghana: untangling a puzzle

This study examines fertility decline that is larger than expected on the basis of recorded increases in contraceptive prevalence in Ghana. The primary sources of data are three Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) conducted in the country in 1988, 1993 and 1998. First, the trend in fertility and contraceptive prevalence in Ghana is considered and compared with the trend that would be expected on the basis of prior research. Next, an attempt is made to uncover the explanation behind this unexpected trend. Measures of the quality of the survey data are looked at, as well as trends in the proximate determinants of fertility: contraceptive use, marriage and sexual activity, postpartum insusceptibility and induced abortion. Finally, evidence is presented that couples adjust their coital frequency in accordance with their fertility preferences, behaviour that would influence fertility rates but would not be captured by conventional measures of the proximate determinants of fertility.     

Morphogenesis in Volvox: analysis of critical variables.

Inversion, the process by which Volvox embryos turn inside out, was analyzed by a combination of geometrical and experimental techniques. It was shown that simple geometric figures are adequate to represent cell shapes during inversion and that cell volumes remain constant as cell shapes change and the embryo inverts. The first stage of inversion, phialopore opening, results from the release of compressive forces as the embryo withdraws from its surrounding vesicle during a two-stage contraction of each cell around its radial axis. Premature phialopore opening occurs when withdrawal of the embryo from the vesicle is elicited artificially by exposure to either calcium ionophore or hypertonic solutions. The major event of inversion, generation of negative curvature, requires both microtubule-driven elongation of cells (to produce a classical "flask" shape) and cytochalasin-sensitive active migration of cytoplasmic bridges to the outermost ends of flask cells. Colchicine, cyclic GMP and isobutyl methyl xanthine (individually) block both normal elongation and bridge migration; cytochalasin D blocks bridge migration selectively. Flask cell formation and bridge migration are adequate to account for the negative curvature observed. An asymmetric bending of flask cell stalks along the ring of maximum curvature accounts for the fact that the embryo is not constricted in a "purse-string" fashion as negative curvature is generated. Inversion of the posterior hemisphere involves an elastic snap-through resulting from a combination of compressive stresses generated by inversion of the anterior hemisphere and the circumferential restraint imposed by cells at the equator. We conclude that the observed changes in cell shape and the migration of cytoplasmic bridges are the result of an ordered process of membrane-cytoskeletal interactions, and both necessary and sufficient to account for the morphogenetic process of inversion in Volvox.     

Determinants of rural and urban fertility differentials in Nigeria

Whatever proximate variables are examined, their differential effects on rural and urban fertility are small. This indicates that no major disturbance has taken place in urban or rural reproductive norms. However, two possible reasons for the converging pattern of rural and urban fertility in Nigeria are identified. One is that urban mothers in the first half of the childbearing age range have higher fertility than their rural counterparts. The other is that breast-feeding and post-partum abstinence, which are the major determinants of marital fertility, exert a more depressing influence on rural than urban fertility.     

Community-level education accelerates the cultural evolution of fertility decline

Explaining why fertility declines as populations modernize is a profound theoretical challenge. It remains unclear whether the fundamental drivers are economic or cultural in nature. Cultural evolutionary theory suggests that community-level characteristics, for example average education, can alter how low-fertility preferences are transmitted and adopted. These assumptions have not been empirically tested. Here, we show that community-level education accelerates fertility decline in a way that is neither predicted by individual characteristics, nor by the level of economic modernization in a population. In 22 high-fertility communities in Poland, fertility converged on a smaller family size as average education in the community increased—indeed community-level education had a larger impact on fertility decline than did individual education. This convergence was not driven by educational levels being more homogeneous, but by less educated women having fewer children than expected, and more highly educated social networks, when living among more highly educated neighbours. The average level of education in a community may influence the social partners women interact with, both within and beyond their immediate social environments, altering the reproductive norms they are exposed to. Given a critical mass of highly educated women, less educated neighbours may adopt their reproductive behaviour, accelerating the pace of demographic transition. Individual characteristics alone cannot capture these dynamics and studies relying solely on them may systematically underestimate the importance of cultural transmission in driving fertility declines. Our results are inconsistent with a purely individualistic, rational-actor model of fertility decline and suggest that optimization of reproduction is partly driven by cultural dynamics beyond the individual.     

An examination of factors influencing black fertility decline in the Mississippi Delta, 1880-1930

Although the fertility decline in the black population in the Mississippi Delta between the late 1870's and early 1930's closely paralleled that of the national black population, it rose much more dramatically in the 1940's and 1950's to almost 1880 levels. Given the especially rural and oppressed conditions of blacks there, the initial decline seems puzzling. Low fertility rates in the 1930's reflected a large proportion of childless females. Investigations of changing contraceptive usage and mate exposure suggest both were minor components at most. Several physiological impairments were investigated including dietary deficiences, malaria, tuberculosis, and sexually transmitted diseases (STD). Evidence suggests STD played the major role, facilitated by nutritional and other health problems. Models relying heavily on those developed by McFalls and McFalls (1984) suggest 50-80 percent of the decline could have been due to the spread of STD. Age-specific birth rates for different periods and post-World-War-II fertility increases seem consistent with this finding.     

Phytophthora spp. associated with the decline of Cedrus deodara in Nanjing,China

Recently, 3-year-old seedlings of Cedrus deodara in Nanjing, China developed root rot, crown rot, chlorosis and defoliation, often resulting in death. Two species of Phytophthora were isolated. One was identified as A2 mating type of P. cinnamomi Rands while the other failed to produce sex organs in single or dual cultures and was tentatively assigned to P. drechsleh Tucker. Their pathogenicity was confirmed by re-inoculation and re-isolation.     

The "amazing" fertility decline: Islam, economics, and reproductive decision making among working-class Moroccan women

Often it is understood that Islam prohibits family planning because the Qur'an does not explicitly address contraception. Public health and development officials have recently congratulated the Muslim world for decreases in fertility given the supposed constraints placed on reproductive healthcare by Islam, while popular culture writers have warned the West of threats by young Muslims if the population goes uncontrolled. This article draws on data collected through interviews with working-class women seeking reproductive healthcare at clinics in Rabat, Morocco, and with medical providers to challenge the link between Islamic ideology and reproductive practices and the correlation among Islam, poverty, and fertility. Morocco, a predominantly Muslim country, has experienced a dramatic decrease in fertility between the 1970s and today. I argue that patients and providers give new meanings to modern reproductive practices and produce new discourses of reproduction and motherhood that converge popular understandings of Islam with economic conditions of the Moroccan working class.     

Breastfeeding decline in urban China: An exploratory study

Retrospective data collected in two urban neighborhoods of Tianjin, People's Republic of China, reveal a decline in the rate and duration of breastfeeding since the mid-1930's. There is no reason to suppose that this decline was stimulated by policies intended to discourage breastfeeding, or by pressures from commercial interests determined to expand the use of milk substitutes or supplements. The evidence indicates that breastfeeding declined as women became involved in work outside the home, as they adopted a form of postmarital residence that separated them from other relatives, as income increased, and as their rural origins decreased. No evidence was found to indicate a relationship between breastfeeding and parity or sex preferences.     

Matriarchy, polyandry, and fertility amongst the Mosuos in China

A survey of 232 households of the Mosuo minority group in Yunnan Province, People's Republic of China, suggested that polyandrous matriarchy did not raise the birth rate per household, but lowered the community birth rate by restricting many women's chances of marrying. The results imply that tolerance by the national government of polyandry within certain minority groups (e.g. Mosuos and Tibetans) will not prevent but may aid the attainment of zero population growth by China in the twenty-first century.