Volume 20 - Article 26 | Pages 623–656  

Does fertility decrease household consumption?: An analysis of poverty dynamics and fertility in Indonesia

By Jungho Kim, Henriette Engelhardt, Alexia Prskawetz, Arnstein Aassve

Abstract

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the relationship between fertility and a direct measure of poverty for Indonesia, a country, which has experienced unprecedented economic growth and sharp fertility declines over recent decades. It focuses on illustrating the sensitivity of the effect of fertility on household consumption with respect to the equivalence scale by applying the propensity score matching method. The analysis suggests that a newborn child decreases household consumption per person by 20 percent within four years. When the estimates of equivalence scales implied by the Indonesian sample are applied, the effect of a child on household consumption is still negative, but the magnitudes are in the range from 20 to 65 percent of that found with the per-capita expenditure as a measure of consumption. Therefore, it is suggested that the analysis based on the conventional measure of poverty is likely to exaggerate the effect of fertility on poverty at least because of the neglect of the proper equivalence scale.

Author's Affiliation

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Austria: Persistent low fertility since the mid-1980s
Volume 19 - Article 12

Pathways to stepfamily formation in Europe: Results from the FFS
Volume 8 - Article 5

Family inequality: On the changing educational gradient of family patterns in Western Germany
Volume 48 - Article 20

How many old people have ever lived?
Volume 36 - Article 54

Changes in economic activity: The role of age and education
Volume 36 - Article 40

What is your couple type? Gender ideology, housework sharing, and babies
Volume 32 - Article 30

On the age-specific correlation between fertility and female employment: Heterogeneity over space and time in OECD countries
Volume 32 - Article 23

Economic support ratios and the demographic dividend in Europe
Volume 30 - Article 34

Family policies in the context of low fertility and social structure
Volume 29 - Article 37

Youth prospects in a time of economic recession
Volume 29 - Article 36

Grandparenting and mothers’ labour force participation: A comparative analysis using the Generations and Gender Survey
Volume 27 - Article 3

The reproductive value as part of the shadow price of population
Volume 24 - Article 28

Women´s wages and childbearing decisions: Evidence from Italy
Volume 22 - Article 19

Albania: Trends and patterns, proximate determinants and policies of fertility change
Volume 19 - Article 11

The "Wedding-Ring": An agent-based marriage model based on social interaction
Volume 17 - Article 3

Youth poverty and transition to adulthood in Europe
Volume 15 - Article 2

Decomposing the change in labour force indicators over time
Volume 13 - Article 7

On the tempo and quantum of first marriages in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland: Changes in mean age and variance
Volume 10 - Article 9

Differences in Family Policies and the Intergenerational Transmission of Divorce: A Comparison between the former East and West Germany
Volume 6 - Article 11

Fertility in second unions in Austria: Findings from the Austrian FFS
Volume 3 - Article 2

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

The big decline: Lowest-low fertility in Uruguay (2016–2021)
Volume 50 - Article 16    | Keywords: adolescent fertility, birth order, fertility, Latin America, ultra-low fertility, Uruguay

Cohort fertility of immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union
Volume 50 - Article 13    | Keywords: age at first birth, assimilation, cohort analysis, fertility, immigration, parity, religiosity

Fertility decline, changes in age structure, and the potential for demographic dividends: A global analysis
Volume 50 - Article 9    | Keywords: age structure, demographic dividend, demographic transition, fertility, migration, population momentum, working-age population

Analyzing hyperstable population models
Volume 49 - Article 37    | Keywords: birth trajectory, cohort analysis, cyclical populations, dynamic population model, fertility, hyperstable, period

Ultra-Orthodox fertility and marriage in the United States: Evidence from the American Community Survey
Volume 49 - Article 29    | Keywords: age at first marriage, American Community Survey (ACS), fertility, Judaism, marriage, religion, total fertility rate (TFR), Ultra-Orthodox Judaism