Fertility Following an Unintended First Birth

Research on unintended fertility tends to focus on births as isolated events. This article expands previous research by examining the relationship between early unintended childbearing and subsequent fertility dynamics in the United States. Data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth show that 27.5% of mothers report an unintended first birth. We use event history methods to show that these women are significantly more likely than women with an intended first birth to have an unintended second birth than to have either no second birth or an intended second birth, net of sociodemographic characteristics. An unintended first birth also increases the risk of having an unintended third birth relative to no birth or an intended birth, independent of the intendedness of the second birth. We conclude that early unintended fertility is a strong signal of high risk for subsequent unintended fertility.     

HIV and Unintended Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa: Multilevel Predictors of Mistimed and Unwanted Fertility Among HIV-Positive Women

Population Research and Policy Review - Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has a disproportionate burden of both unintended fertility and HIV infection, but the relationship between these two reproductive...     

Trajectories of Fertility and Household Composition in the Demographic Profile of the Czech Republic

The household composition matrix is a representation of the demographic structure of households, specific to age groups of household members and household heads. As such, the matrix reflects also the environmental conditions, housing in particular, that mould households' demographic structure. By specifically depicting the presence of children in households, household composition could be viewed as gauging fertility within the context of housing conditions. This stance is examined in an application to Czech census data for the year 1991, at the commencement of an intense process of socio-economic transformation that accompanied the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe. Within this process, housing had an inadvertent impact upon the structure of households in general, and upon fertility decline in particular. By using the standard matrix representation of household composition, correspondence between trajectories of age-specific fertility and household composition emerge throughout the Czech Republic. This correspondence illustrates the potential household composition analysis carries for fertility measurement and estimation in rapidly changing economic environments.     

Unintended Population Consequences of Policies

Unintended population consequences of policies stem from three sources: (1) A policy overshoots its original goal; (2) different policies conflict, so that the implementation of one policy inhibits implementation of another policy; (3) negative consequences of a policy are unforeseen, or are anticipated but judged unlikely to be severe or considered less important than the positive aims of the policy. Examples from Singapore, South Africa, Italy, the U.S., and the former Soviet Union are discussed.     

从政策生育率看中国生育政策的多样性

以政策生育率为量化指标以期具体地反映我国的生育政策在地区分布、人口分布和地理分布上的多样性。本文的分析表明 ,1 3～ 1 5之间的政策生育率都在全国占主导地位 ,全国人口的大多数处于 1 3～ 2 0之间的政策生育率地区 ,实行“1 5孩”生育政策的人口占全国的一半以上。从本文可以得出结论 ,在鼓励“少生”的总原则下 ,从当地的实际出发 ,全国各地的生育政策呈现出相当多样化的情况 ,把中国的生育政策笼统地归结为是一个不加区别的、全国一律的“一孩政策”是不符合实际的     

论生育文化和生育文明

生育文明中表现了生育文化的种种现象和活动,生育文化也体现了生育文明的历史轨迹、进程和内容。生育文化的发展表现了不同时期人类生育文明的进步与发展,不体现生育文化内涵的生育文明显然是不存在的。然而,严格说来,生育文化和生育文明是既有密切联系,又有一定区别的两个不完全等同的概念。正确认识和理解生育文化和生育文明的概念、内涵、功能及其相互关系,对于推动新时期人口计生工作的深入发展,进一步开展人口和计划生育的理论研究,具有十分重要的意义和作用。     

应用队列累计生育率分析我国生育水平变动趋势——兼与郭志刚教授讨论

本文对反映生育水平的两个基本指标——总和生育率和队列累计生育率进行分析,肯定多年来多个调查所得到的队列累计生育率的数据质量。尽管队列累计生育率反映的是"过去"而不是"当前"的实际生育水平,但历次调查所反映出的1990年代以来生育水平变化趋势是持续下降,并推断近几年的总和生育率已经下降到1.6以下。     

Adapting Fertility Exposure Analysis to the Study of Fertility Change

Fertility exposure analysis was developed recently by Hobcraft and Little in order to evaluate the relative importance of the various proximate determinants upon levels of current fertility. In the present paper we extend the analysis to the study of changes in fertility between two cross-sectional surveys. We show how to express fertility change as a product of terms which represent changes in the proximate determinants. The model of change is adapted to a log-linear framework, in which the proximate determinants on the one hand, and socio-economic variables such as education, on the other, are considered together. A few simplifications of the method are also suggested so that fewer demands are made on data. The model and its possible interpretations are illustrated with pairs of surveys from Pakistan and Mexico. In each pair, one survey was part of the WFS programme and the other was very similar but conducted five years later.     

生育率的经济学分析

本文在前人研究的基础上,从经济学角度分析了家庭收入对生育决策的影响,并尝试进一步推导出“收入-生育率”曲线。与以往研究不同的是,本文认为生育率与家庭收入并不总是呈反向关系,而是收入到了一定水平以后,生育率水平又会随之上升,即“收入-生育率”曲线基本呈扁平“U”形曲线形态。     

Great Expectations: The Unintended Consequences of Educational Choices

Human capital is invariably found to be an important explanatory variable of various proxies for well being (WB), i.e. income, happiness, job and life satisfaction, and health status. Nevertheless, to date few systematic efforts have been made to explain its various interconnected functions. The U-shaped age-SWB relation found in many empirical studies suggests that investigating the pattern of different measures of WB over people’s life cycles may reveal important information and provide useful insights into the principal mechanisms that connect human capital and WB. In this paper, I explore data drawn from the Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) conducted by the Bank of Italy, which is a rich source of information on people’s socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, educational and skill mismatches in the workplace, and various measures of WB such as income, happiness, job satisfaction, and health status. I adopt a novel approach based on the idea that one should look at the overall contribution of education to well being within people’s life-cycles. The tentative explanations of my empirical findings are: (a) more educated people and people with vocational educations experience wide mismatches in their aspirations and expectations early in their adult lives; (b) these mismatches are largely confined to the labour market; and (c) the curvature of the U-shaped age-happiness relationship depends on the level and type of education. The suggested interpretation of these results is that education affects both people’s expectations and the way they react to unfulfilled aspirations.     

Using Discrete-Time Event History Fertility Models to Simulate Total Fertility Rates and Other Fertility Measures

Event history models, also known as hazard models, are commonly used in analyses of fertility. One drawback of event history models is that the conditional probabilities (hazards) estimated by event history models do not readily translate into summary measures, particularly for models of repeatable events, like childbirth. In this paper, we describe how to translate the results of discrete-time event history models of all births into well-known summary fertility measures: simulated age- and parity-specific fertility rates, parity progression ratios, and the total fertility rate. The method incorporates all birth intervals, but permits the hazard functions to vary across parities. It can also simulate values for groups defined by both fixed and time-varying covariates, such as marital or employment life histories. We demonstrate the method using an example from the National Survey of Family Growth and provide an accompanying data file and Stata program.     

生育理性和生育决策与我国低生育水平稳定机制的转变

自改革开放以来 ,我国人口生育率水平出现了迅速的转变 ,特别是 1 992年我国确立了市场经济为目标的经济改革以来 ,生育率水平更是进一步降低到更替水平以下。如果说 ,生育率的迅速转变是在国家计划生育政策干预下启动的 ,那么 ,在 1 990年代生育率的下降应该主要是社会和经济发展的结果。以市场经济为导向的经济改革和经济的迅速发展 ,已经为稳定我国城市地区人口低生育率水平提供了必要的经济条件 ,同时 ,制度、技术和文化等因素的变革已经为我国个人生育决策理性化创造了条件 ,低生育水平的稳定机制已经开始从政策控制为主转向群众自我控制为主的转变     

Unintended consequences of Immigration Reform: Discrimination and hispanic employment

The record-keeping requirements of the Immigration Reform and Control Act(IRCA), and fines for illegal employment, may induce employers to discriminate against foreign-appearing workers. The General Accounting Office (GAO) reported widespread IRCA-related discrimination but did not link reported discriminatory practices to discriminatory employment behavior. We analyze the GAO’s random survey and, controlling for selectivity effects, demonstrate that employers who report discriminatory practices actually employ fewer Hispanics. Although the measured reduction of Hispanic employment due to IRCA is fairly small, this finding parallels research alerting us to adverse consequences of a law that so far has achieved few of its intended effects.     

试论时期总和生育率、终身生育率与政策生育率的关系

通过对总和生育率(TFR)、终身生育率(CFR)与政策生育率(PFR)的概念及相关数据分析,论证总和生育率与政策生育率是完全不同的概念,不可直接比较。在特定条件下TFR、CFR和政策生育率会产生差异,在一个国家生育水平下降的历史时期,TFR必然小于当年49岁组女性的CFR;"超生率"、"未婚率"、"未育率"和"不孕率"的变化,决定了政策生育率与终身生育率的差异。借鉴日本经济与人口发展相关数据,可以相信由平均初婚年龄推迟、女性有偶率下降导致的生育水平下降很可能成为对我国人口均衡发展的最大潜在威胁。因此,当前以及今后相当的时期内,我国的政策生育率应高于1.8。     

中国低生育水平下的生育意愿与生育行为差异研究

在国家实行全面两孩政策背景下,认清生育意愿与生育行为的差异,是把握中国未来人口形势变化的关键。文章利用2010年以来的四次全国性抽样调查原始数据,对中国育龄人群的生育意愿与生育行为的差异及影响因素进行分析。研究发现:中国目前意愿生育水平在1.82~1.88的区间范围内,其点估计值在1.86左右,已显著低于更替水平;越年轻的出生队列其生育意愿越低,中国未来的意愿生育水平可能会继续降低;育龄人群的意愿生育水平要显著高于其终身生育水平,且二者差异随年龄的减小呈递增趋势,中国未来生育水平存在进一步下降的可能性;没有生育政策限制下的终身生育水平仅为1.68,这可以作为生育政策调整对中国生育水平影响的上限。生育政策对当前育龄人群生育意愿与生育水平差异的贡献度在33%左右,全面两孩政策对中国生育水平的提升作用有限。     

Birth Spacing and Child Health Trajectories

Using longitudinal data on a cohort of over 4,000 children from four low- and middle-income countries, we document the association between birth spacing and child growth trajectories. We find declines in child height at age 1 among children who are born within three years of an older sibling. However, we also observe catch-up growth for closely spaced children as they age. We find no evidence that catch-up growth is driven by remedial health investments after birth, suggesting substitutability in underlying biological processes. We also find that very widely spaced children (preceding birth interval of more than seven years) are similar in height at age 1 as children who are spaced three to seven years apart, but outgrow their more closely spaced counterparts as they age. However, further sibling comparisons suggest that the growth premium that is observed for very widely spaced children may be driven by unobserved confounding factors.     

Fertility of the jews

The objectives of this paper were to review and summarize the existing literature on Jewish fertility and to discuss the highlights of data on fertility trends and differentials based on survey data obtained on the Jewish population of the metropolitan area of Providence, Rhode Island. The literature consistently confirmed the finding of lower fertility among Jews since the 1880's in the United States and for the last seventy-five years in a variety of European countries.A review of available data on fertility trends and differentials within the Jewish population indicated contradictory and inconsistent findings. The Providence survey data pointed to changing patterns of fertility among Jews and clarified a number of seeming inconsistencies. These data suggested (1) the pre-World War II decline and postwar recovery of Jewish fertility; (2) the change from an inverse relationship of social class and Jewish fertility among first-generation Jews to a direct relationship among second- and third-generation Jews; (3) the changing relationship of religiosity and Jewish fertility, which reflects social class changes.Finally, an attempt is made to clarify the interpretation of these and related findings by placing the analysis of Jewish fertility in the context of assimilation and acculturation.     

甘肃省居民生育意愿与生育目的的调查研究

文章利用2007年调查数据,分析研究了甘肃省居民的生育意愿和生育目的。调查发现．随着经济的发展和社会的进步,甘肃省居民的意愿生育数量不断减少,已经略低于更替生育水平,男孩偏好的意愿生育性别倾向仍然广泛存在,期望生育一儿一女是大部分甘肃居民最为普遍的愿望,意愿妇女初育年龄不断推迟．生育目的呈现出多元化趋势,但养老送终、传宗接代仍是目前最重要的生育目的。