Multiple Perspectives on Recent Trends in Unwanted Fertility in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

The last four decades have witnessed large declines in fertility globally. This study uses data from 78 low- and middle-income countries to examine concurrent trends in unwanted fertility. Three measures of unwanted fertility are contrasted: the conventional unwanted total fertility rate, a proposed conditional unwanted fertility rate, and the percentage of births unwanted. Incidence of unwanted births and prevalence of exposure to unwanted births are both derived from answers to questions on prospective fertility preference, recognized as the most valid and reliable survey measure of preferences. Country-level trends are modeled both historically and with the decline in total fertility, with a focus on regional differentials. Results show that unwanted fertility rates—especially the conditional unwanted fertility rate—have declined substantially in recent decades. By contrast, the percentage of births unwanted has declined less, remaining stable or even increasing: from a birth cohort perspective, declines in unwanted fertility have been far more modest than the increased parental success in avoiding unwanted births. The regional patterns suggest that sub-Saharan Africa has several similarities with other major regions but also some peculiar features, including a recent stall in the decline of unwanted fertility that persists after controlling for the stage of fertility transition.

The Influence of Kin Proximity on the Reproductive Success of American Couples, 1900–1910

Children require a large amount of time, effort, and resources to raise. Physical help, financial contributions, medical care, and other types of assistance from kin and social network members allow couples to space births closer together while maintaining or increasing child survival. We examine the impact of kin availability on couples' reproductive success in the early twentieth-century United States with a panel data set of over 3.1 million couples linked between the 1900 and 1910 U.S. censuses. Our results indicate that kin proximity outside the household was positively associated with fertility, child survival, and net reproduction, and suggest that declining kin availability was an important contributing factor to the fertility transition in the United States. We also find important differences between maternal and paternal kin inside the household—including higher fertility among women residing with their mother-in-law than among those residing with their mother—that support hypotheses related to the contrasting motivations and concerns of parents and parents-in-law.

The spatial diffusion of fertility decline in Egypt (1950–2006)

While the Egyptian fertility transition has been widely addressed in the literature, few researches have studied the spatial dimension of fertility. Using population census data, the aim of this study is to describe and measure the evolution of the geography of fertility on a subnational scale (qism/markaz), focusing on the period between 1960 and 2006. We assumed that the decline in fertility had spread spatially through Egypt, the spatial diffusion occurring through two traditional mechanisms: contagion and hierarchical diffusion. Our results confirm our hypotheses and highlight the importance of studying the spatial diffusion of the fertility transition. This study is unique for the Egyptian context given the long period and fine territorial scale considered. Our study constitutes an important addition to the existing group of studies on the spatial diffusion of fertility. Finally, it contributes to gaining further insight into a demographic dynamic which is fundamental for the future of Egypt.

On the origins of the demographic transition: rethinking the European marriage pattern

Why did France experience the demographic transition first? This question remains one of the greatest puzzles of economics, demography, and economic history. The French pattern is hard to reconcile with elucidations of the process as found in other countries. The present analysis goes back to the roots of the process and offers novel ways of explaining why people started to control their fertility in France and how they did so. In this paper, I track the evolution of marriage patterns to a point before the premises of the demographic transition. I identify two distinct phases. Next, I rely on exploratory methods to classify French counties based on their discriminatory features. Five profiles emerge. I discuss these profiles through the lens of the French Revolution, one of the greatest events that ever occurred in French history, which irretrievably altered its society. In particular, the results show that the fertility transition was not as linear, but more complex than previous research had argued. They show the importance of accounting for cultural factors and for individuals’ predispositions to adapt more or less quickly to societal changes. Yet cultural factors are not all. They can help to explain the timing of the transition and the choice of methods used to control fertility, but modernity and gender equality are also needed to describe the mechanisms in play behind the process.

Agricultural productivity and fertility: Evidence from the oil palm boom in Indonesia

We analyze the link between agricultural productivity growth and fertility, using the oil palm boom in Indonesia as empirical setting. During the time period 1996 to 2016, we find consistently negative effects of the oil palm expansion on fertility. We explain this finding with rising farm profits, that led to consumption growth, the expansion of the non-agricultural sector, increasing returns to education and to higher school nrollment. Together these findings suggest that agricultural productivity growth can play an important role in accelerating the fertility transition, as long as the economic benefits are large enough to translate into local economic development.

Fertility and Modernity

We investigate the determinants of the fertility decline in Europe from 1830 to 1970 using a newly constructed dataset of linguistic distances between European regions. The decline resulted from the gradual diffusion of new fertility behavior from French-speaking regions to the rest of Europe. Societies with higher education, lower infant mortality, higher urbanization, and higher population density had lower levels of fertility during the 19th and early 20th century. However, the fertility decline took place earlier in communities that were culturally closer to the French, while the fertility transition spread only later to societies that were more distant from the frontier. This is consistent with a process of social influence, whereby societies that were culturally closer to the French faced lower barriers to learning new information and adopting novel attitudes regarding fertility control.

Factors Influencing Progression to a Larger Family in Mid- and Late-Transitional Fertility Stalls: A Case Study of Bangladesh

Bangladesh has experienced stallsin fertility decline in different stages of fertility transition. This study explored the predictors of progression to a larger family in Bangladesh duringthe mid-transitional fertility stall that occurredin the late 1990s and the late-transitional fertility stall in the early 2010s by analyzing the progression to third and fourth births, and progression to third birth. This study analyzedthe 1999/2000 and 2014 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey data using descriptive analysis technique, chi-square test, and random-effects Cox hazard model. Results showedthat women were significantly slower in having a higher-order birth in both stalls if they noticed family planning messages, attained secondary or higher education, were non-Muslim, did not experience child death, and livedoutside of the Chattogram and Sylhet regions. Although progression to a higher-order birth in the late-transitional stall became more homogeneous among different groups, the urban-rural difference in having a higher-order birththat was nonsignificant in the mid-transitional stall became significant in the late-transitionalstall. Besides thesefactors, the effects of religion and region increased substantially in the late-transitionstall. The findings highlight a necessity forthe government’sattention to family planning programsalong with the increasing gaps between urban-rural residences, regions, and religious groups in having higher-order births.

Rethinking the Fertility Transition in Rural Aragón (Spain) Using Height Data

Based on an analysis of the life trajectories of 2510 conscripts and their families from a Spanish rural area in the period 1835–1977, this paper studies the development of the fertility transition in relation to height using bivariate analyses. The use of heights is an innovative perspective of delving into the fertility transition and social transformation entailed. The results confirm that the men with a low level of biological well-being (related to low socio-economic groups) were those who started to control their fertility, perhaps due to the effect that increased average family size had on their budget. The children of individuals who controlled their fertility were taller than the children of other families. Therefore, the children of parents who controlled their fertility experienced the largest intergenerational increase in height (approximately 50% higher). This increase could be due to the consequence of a greater investment in children (Becker’s hypothesis) or a greater availability of resources for the whole family (resource dilution hypothesis).