C

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!

  • 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