Kaiser 2011 & Morgan 2003

Kaiser 2011 - Does Family Planning Bring Down Fertility

• Demographers: say that women’s lack of contraception keeps fertility high

  • Based on health surveys in developing countries
  • Unmet need
  • Important factors to consider: cultural taboos and fears of side effects (could be addressed only by intense public education campaigns
  • Strong government

• Economists: say that family planning programs are a waste of money because fertility really depends on desired family size

  • Strongest predictors of a woman’s desired family size: income, education level, infant’s chances of surviving
  • So we should spend money on schooling, not family planning programs

• Combination of both approaches!

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• Vaupel: argues that our lifespans will stay the same in the future

• Olshansky: argues that our lifespans will decrease in the future

  • Our lifespans are guided by aspects of human biology that appear fairly fixed

Morgan 2003 - Is Low Fertility a Twenty-First-Century Demographic Crisis?

• Total fertility rate: is declining below replacement levels
• Women now have fewer children than they want and have children at late ages
• Problem: dramatic population aging

Emerging Global Low Fertility

• Only 16 countries are not showing evidence of a fertility transition
• 64 countries have fertility at replacement level or below
• 105 countries are experiencing fertility transitions
• Only 2 countries have stopped their transition at a fertility level that is above the replacement level

Is Very Low Fertility Inevitable?

• Bumpass: increased costs of children + idea that individuals should assess these costs and act in their self-interest
• Campbell + Ryder: very low fertility is not inevitable

Low Versus High Parity Births

• 75%-90% are 1st or 2nd births
• Proportion of women who intend to have 2 children is dominant in most developed countries
• First children: desired for affective reasons
• Second children: for family building
• Higher order births: economic functions
  • Socioeconomic change
• Large families are now viewed as inconsistent with good parenting
• Powerful trends toward individualism and self-actualization
• Biological predispositions reinforce the desire for parenthood

Institutional Adjustments

• Institutional adjustments can make small families feasible
• Importance of affordable, quality child care to weaken the incompatibility of work and childbearing
• Gender + technological changes that affect the division of household labour

An Integrative Framework

• TFR: results from the population’s intended family size x set of factors reflecting unanticipated effects
• Delayed childbearing: can lead to women not having all the children they intend
  • High levels of infecundity at older ages
• Importance of public policy and institutional responses

Is Low Fertility A Crisis?

• Low fertility is not a crisis, it’s a problem
• Low fertility: causes rapidly aging populations
• Multiphasic response
• Societies that can respond to the legitimate needs of their citizens and invest in the next generations will approximate replacement-level fertility

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