Demographic Research

Couple disagreement about short-term fertility desires in Austria: Effects on intentions and contraceptive behaviour (by Maria Rita Testa)

2012-02-03T00:00:00Z

BACKGROUND
Because of the dyadic nature of reproduction, the couple is the most suitable context for studying reproductive decision-making.

OBJECTIVE
I investigate the effects of couple disagreement about short-term childbearing desires on the formulation and implementation of fertility intentions. Do men and women incorporate the perception of a disagreement with the partner about wanting a(nother) child now in their reports on short-term fertility intentions and contraceptive behaviour? Are there relevant differences by type of disagreement, parity, gender and gender equality within the couple?

METHODS
Using individual-level data from the Austrian Generation and Gender Survey conducted in 2008, I regress respondent's short-term fertility intentions (ordinal regression models) and non-use of contraception (logistic regression model) on couple's short-term childbearing desires and a set of background variables.

RESULTS
The findings show that disagreement is shifted toward a pregnancy intention\pregnancy- seeking behaviour at parity zero and toward avoiding pregnancy and maintaining contraceptive use at higher parities. Childless women are less responsive to the perception of their partner's desires than childless men when they express their short-term childbearing intentions. Neither women nor men are likely to stop contraception if they perceive a disagreement with their partner about wanting a(nother) child. Moreover, if the man is actively involved in childcare duties the chance to resolve the couple conflict in favour of childbearing increases.

CONCLUSIONS
This paper calls for the collection of data from both members of each couple so that the analysis of the partner's actual desires can complement the analysis of the partner's perceived desires.

Whose job instability affects the likelihood of becoming a parent in Italy? A tale of two partners (by Daniele Vignoli, Sven Drefahl, Gustavo De Santis)

2012-01-26T00:00:00Z

We examine the likelihood of becoming a parent in Italy taking into account the employment (in)stability of both partners in a couple. We use data from four waves of the Italian section of the EU-SILC (Statistics on Income and Living Condition), 2004-2007, accounting for its longitudinal nature. Overall, our results suggest that Italian couples are neither fully traditional nor entirely modern: the "first pillar" (i.e., a male partner with a stable and well-paid job) is still crucial in directing fertility decisions, because, in our interpretation, it gives the household a feeling of (relative) economic security. But this "old" family typology is becoming rare. Increasingly, both partners are employed, and in this case the characteristics of their employment prove important. A permanent occupation for both partners is associated with higher fertility, while alternative job typologies for either of the two depress fertility.

The influence of employment uncertainty on childbearing in France: A tempo or quantum effect? (by Ariane Pailhé, Anne Solaz)

2012-01-11T00:00:00Z

This paper investigates whether unemployment and insecure employment periods merely delay fertility or also impact on completed fertility in France. It analyses both the timing of first childbearing and the fertility reached at age 40. Different indicators of declining employment security are used, i.e. current individual employment characteristics, the accumulation of unstable jobs, and aggregate-level indicators of employment uncertainty. Male unemployment has a negative influence on the timing of first childbearing, while periods of insecure employment delay fertility for women. Completed fertility is impacted by unemployment spells only for men who have faced long-term unemployment. Employment uncertainty thus tends to delay first parenthood but has a relatively weak effect on lifetime fertility in France. Generous state support to families associated with a generous unemployment insurance system, and the strong French two-child family norm may explain why economic uncertainty affects fertility less than elsewhere.

An inquiry into the uneven distribution of women's HIV infection in rural Malawi (by Michelle Poulin, Adamson S. Muula)

2011-12-21T00:00:00Z

Ecological comparisons in sub-Saharan Africa show that HIV prevalence is lower where men are generally circumcised than where they are not. Randomized controlled trials have found a 50-60Š reduction in HIV acquisition for newly circumcised men. Yet in Malawi, HIV prevalence is highest in several districts in the Southern Region, where men are commonly circumcised. We draw upon a population-based sample of ever-married women to explore this unexpected finding. Our data show that in the southern district of Balaka, women with circumcised spouses have a lower probability of HIV infection compared to those with uncircumcised spouses. However, the strength of this effect is conditioned by specific marital histories: among women with circumcised spouses, those with multiple marriages and an absence of spousal co-residence have a higher probability of HIV infection than do those married once and those who have never lived apart from their spouses. The history of marital turnover and female-headed households among the ethnic groups of Balaka offer insight into the district's elevated HIV levels.

Ethnic differentials of the impact of Family Planning Program on contraceptive use in Nepal (by Sharad Kumar Sharma, Dhruba Raj Ghimire, Naresh Pratap)

2011-12-20T00:00:00Z

There is wide variation of family planning services use among ethnic groups in Nepal. Despite three decades of implementation the need for family planning services is substantially unmet (25Š), and there have been no systematic studies evaluating the impact of the family planning program. This study pooled data from nationally representative surveys conducted in 1996, 2001, and 2006. Multilevel logistic regression analysis of 23,381 married women of reproductive age nested within 764 clusters indicated that Muslims, Janjatis, and Dalits were significantly less likely to use contraceptives than Brahmins and Chhetries (OR=0.27, 0.88 and 0.82 respectively). The odds of using contraceptives by the Newar were higher than the odds for Brahmins and Chhetries, although it was not significant. Exposure of women to family planning messages through health facilities, family planning workers, radio, and television increased the odds of using modern contraceptives. However, the impact of family planning information on contraceptive use varied according to ethnicity. We also found that modern contraceptive use varied significantly across the clusters, and the cluster-level indicators, such as mean age at marriage, mean household asset score, percentage of women with secondary education, and percentage of women working away from home, were important in explaining this.

China's far below replacement fertility and its long-term impact: Comments on the preliminary results of the 2010 census (by Zhongwei Zhao, Wei Chen)

2011-12-09T00:00:00Z

The Chinese government conducted its sixth national census in 2010 and released its major results in April 2011. According to the National Bureau of Statistics the quality of the census was very high. Although the currently released census results consist of limited statistics only, they shed new light on China's recent fertility levels, which have been debated among scholars and policy makers for more than a decade. The 2010 census results, however, also show considerable inconsistencies with those published by the United Nations Population Division recently. This paper will, on the basis of newly published census results and other available evidence, further examine China's recent fertility decline and its impact on the country's long-term development. It will also comment on the major discrepancies between the results of Chinese government recent population projection, the United Nations' World Population Prospects, the 2010 Revision and China's 2010 census, and investigate the underlying causes that have led to these differences.

Assimilation and emerging health disparities among new generations of U.S. children (by Erin Hamilton, Jodi Berger Cardoso, Robert Hummer, Yolanda C. Padilla)

2011-12-08T00:00:00Z

This article shows that the prevalence of four common child health conditions increases across generations (from first-generation immigrant children to second-generation U.S.-born children of immigrants to third-and-higher-generation children) within each of four major U.S. racial/ethnic groups. In the third-plus generation, black and Hispanic children have higher rates of nearly all conditions. Health care, socioeconomic status, parents' health, social support, and neighborhood conditions influence child health and help explain third-and-higher-generation racial/ethnic disparities. However, these factors do not explain the generational pattern. The generational pattern may reflect cohort changes, selective ethnic attrition, unhealthy assimilation, or changing responses to survey questions among immigrant groups.

The effects of integration and transnational ties on international return migration intentions (by Hein de Haas, Tineke Fokkema)

2011-12-06T00:00:00Z

While return migration is receiving increasing attention, there is still insufficient insight into the factors which determine migrants' intentions and decisions to return. It is often assumed that integration in receiving countries and the concomitant weakening of transnational ties decreases the likelihood of returning. However, according to alternative theoretical interpretations, return migration can also be the outflow of successful integration in receiving countries. Drawing on a data set of four African immigrant groups in Spain and Italy, this articlereviews these conflicting hypotheses by assessing the effects of integration and transnational ties on return migration intentions. The results of the analysis suggest that socio-cultural integration has a negative effect on return migration intentions, while economic integration and transnational ties have more ambiguous and sometimes positive effects. The results provide mixed support for the different hypotheses but question theoretical perspectives that unequivocally conceptualizereturn migration and transnationalism as causes and/or consequences of "integration failure".

Constraint or choice? Disentangling fertility determinants by switching regressions (by Christoph Sax)

2011-11-15T00:00:00Z

In 1953, many poor countries had not yet approached the demographic transition. Accordingly, income generally had a positive impact on fertility in poor countries, while it has a negative impact today. Easterlin's supply-demand framework offers an explanation for this nonlinearity by attributing the positive relationship to Malthusian (or "supply") factors and the negative relationship to "demand" factors.

This paper estimates Easterlin's supply-demand framework by switching regressions in a panel data set of 152 countries from 1953 to 1998. The technique allows identifying several factors affecting the Malthusian constraint and the demand for children, such as income, the source of income, urbanization, religion and the medical environment.

It is found that a combination of higher GDP per capita, a decrease in the infant death rate and an increase in education explain a substantial part of the reversal of the relationship between income and net fertility over the sample period.

Constructing a survey over time: Audio-visual feedback and theatre sketches in rural Mali (by Véronique Hertrich, Marie Lesclingand, Martine Quaglia, Amandine Stephan)

2011-10-20T00:00:00Z

Knowledge dissemination is an emerging issue in population studies, both in terms of ethics and data quality. The challenge is especially important in long term follow-up surveys and it requires methodological imagination when the population is illiterate. The paper presents the dissemination project developed in a demographic surveillance system implemented in rural Mali over the last 20 years. After basic experience of document transfer, the feedback strategy was developed through audiovisual shows and theatre sketches. The advantages and drawbacks of these media are discussed, in terms of scientific communication and the construction of dialogue with the target population.

Cohort change, diffusion, and support for gender egalitarianism in cross-national perspective (by Fred Pampel)

2011-09-30T00:00:00Z

Arguments about the spread of gender egalitarian values through a population highlight several sources of change. First, structural arguments point to increases in the proportion of women with high education, jobs with good pay, commitment to careers outside the family, and direct interests in gender equality. Second, value-shift arguments contend that gender norms change with economic affluence among women and men in diverse positions-at all levels of education, for example. Third, diffusion arguments suggest that structural changes lead to adoption of new ideas and values supportive of gender equality by innovative, high-education groups, but that the new ideas later diffuse to other groups. This study tests these arguments by using International Social Survey Program surveys in 1988, 1994, and 2002 for 19 nations to examine gender egalitarianism across 85 cohorts born from roughly 1900 to 1984. Multilevel models support diffusion arguments by demonstrating that the effects of education first strengthen with early adoption of gender egalitarianism and then weaken as other groups come to accept the same views. However, the evidence of a sequence of divergence and convergence in educational differences across cohorts appears most clearly for women in Western nations.