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58 POPULATION STUDIES
November 1998, Vol. 52, N° 3
The role of contraceptive supply and demand in Mexican fertility decline: Evidence from a microdemographic study.
This paper uses retrospective life history data to assess the impact of family planning services on contraceptive use in a rural Mexican township. Between 1960 and 1990 contraceptive use rose and fertility declined dramatically. Both contraceptive supply and demand factors were influential in these trends. The start of the government-sponsored family planning programme in the late 1970s was associated with a sharp rise in female sterilization and use of the IUD. However, once we controlled for the changing socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the sample, the presence of family planning services had no significant effect on the likelihood that women used modern reversible methods compared to traditional methods. Men and women expressed concerns about the safety of modern methods such as the pill and the IUD. Efforts to increase modern contraceptive use should place greater emphasis on communicating the safety of these methods and improving the quality of services.
English - pp. 255-274.
D. P. Lindstrom, Department of Sociology, Maxcy Hall, Box 1916, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, U.S.A.
David_Lindstrom_1@brown.edu.
(MEXICO, FERTILITY DECLINE, CONTRACEPTION, SUPPLY AND DEMAND, FAMILY PLANNING PROGRAMMES, PROGRAMME EVALUATION)
99.58.2 - BRACHER, Michael; SANTOW, Gigi.
Economic Independence and union formation in Sweden.
Although sociologists, demographers, and economists are generally agreed that economic independence enhances the likelihood that men will marry, there is disagreement concerning its effect on women. The view that economic independence weakens women's incentive to marry has probably been the most influential, although it has been subjected to few rigorous empirical tests with individual-level data. In the present paper we examine the predictors of forming a first cohabiting union, of progressing from this union to marriage, and of marrying without previously cohabiting by applying hazard regression to event-history data from the 1992 Swedish Family Survey, supplemented by earnings data extracted from the national taxation register. We test a battery of measures that reflect people's past, current, and potential attachment to the labour market. We find that the correlates of union formation for women are largely indistinguishable from the correlates of union formation for men, and that far from being less likely than other women to cohabit or to marry, women with a greater degree of economic self-sufficiency are more likely to do so.
English - pp. 275-294.
M. Bracher and G. Santow, Demography Unit, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
(SWEDEN, FAMILY FORMATION, COUPLE, MARRIAGE, CONSENSUAL UNION, SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONDITIONS, WOMEN'S STATUS)
99.58.3 - SCHOEN, Robert; KIM, Young J.
Momentum under a gradual approach to zero growth.
A population's growth potential is significantly underestimated by conventional calculations of population momentum which assume an immediate drop to replacement level fertility. Here we assume that the growth rate of births linearly declines to zero over a specified time interval, and find simple and intuitively meaningful expressions for the size of the ultimate birth cohort and the resultant population momentum. In particular, we find that the increase in the number of births over the transition is equal to growth at the initial rate for half the time needed to attain a constant birth level. Thus our formula readily calculates the growth potential of a population under a gradual approach to stationarity without the need for a numerical projection. Calculations for actual and hypothetical populations are presented to show the demographic impact of such gradual approaches to zero growth.
English - pp. 295-299.
R. Schoen and Y. J. Kim, Department of Population Dynamics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, U.S.A.
(POPULATION REPLACEMENT, POPULATION DYNAMICS, FERTILITY DECLINE, ZERO POPULATION GROWTH, METHODOLOGY)
99.58.4 - ARNOLD, Fred; KIM CHOE, Minja; ROY, T. K.
Son preference, the family-building process and child mortality in India.
India is a country with a pervasive preference for sons and one of the highest levels of excess child mortality for girls in the world (child mortality for girls exceeds child mortality for boys by 43%). In this article, data from the National Family Health Survey are used to examine the effect of son preference on parity progression and ultimately on child mortality. The demographic effects of family composition are estimated with hazard models. The analysis indicates that son preference fundamentally affects demographic behaviour in India. Family composition affects fertility behaviour in every state examined and son preference is the predominant influence in all but one of these states. The effects of family composition on excess child mortality for girls are more complex, but girls with older sisters are often subject to the highest risk of mortality.
English - pp. 301-315.
F. Arnold, Measure DHS+, Macro International, Calverton, MD, U.S.A.
(INDIA, SEX PREFERENCE, FAMILY COMPOSITION, INFANT MORTALITY, CHILD MORTALITY, FERTILITY DETERMINANTS)
99.58.5 - LARSEN, Ulla; CHUNG, Woojin; DAS GUPTA, Monica.
Fertility and son preference in Korea.
In Korea, total fertility declined from 6.0 in 1960 to 1.6 in 1990, in spite of a strong preference for male offspring. This paper addresses the notion that son preference hinders fertility decline, and examines the effects of patriarchal relations and modernization on fertility using the 1991 Korea National Fertility and Family Health Survey. It was found that women who have a son are less likely to have another child, and that women with a son who do progress to have another child, take longer to conceive the subsequent child. This pattern prevailed for women of parity one, two, and three, and became more pronounced with higher parity. A multivariate analysis showed that preference for male offspring, patriarchy, and modernization are all strong predictors of second, third, and fourth conceptions.
English - pp. 317-325.
U. Larsen, Harvard School of Public Health, 665 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, U.S.A.
(KOREA, SEX PREFERENCE, FERTILITY DECLINE, FERTILITY DETERMINANTS, PARITY)
99.58.6 - LUNN, David J.; SIMPSON, Stephen N.; DIAMOND, Ian; MIDDLETON, Liz.
The accuracy of age-specific population estimates for small areas in Britain.
Population estimates play an important role in the allocation of resources at many levels of government and commerce but little is known about the accuracy of age-specific population estimates. Such knowledge is crucial, as resource allocation is often targeted at populations of particular age, and decisions need to be based on the reliability of the estimates. This paper presents a multi-level statistical analysis of the accuracy of age-specific population estimates made for British local authorities in 1991. The aim of this work is to identify the factors that influence accuracy, and to investigate how these influences interact. Our analyses show that the following area characteristics are key factors: true population size; intercensal population change; and percentages of unemployed residents, armed forces residents, and students. In addition, we find that the overall type of method used to calculate estimates is important, and that its effect varies both with area characteristics and with agegroup. Local census methods are found to be generally superior, but a low-cost apportionment method, if implemented well, may be as effective.
English - pp. 327-344.
D. Lunn, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Imperial College School of Medicine at St Mary's, London W2 1PG, U.K.
(UNITED KINGDOM, POPULATION ESTIMATES, AGE DISTRIBUTION, LOCAL COMMUNITIES, QUALITY OF DATA)
99.58.7 - BIN PARK, Chai; ATAHARUL ISLAM, Mohamed; CHAKRABORTY, Nitai; KANTNER, Andrew.
Partitioning the effect of infant and child death on subsequent fertility: An exploration in Bangladesh.
A method of partitioning the fertility impact of infant and child death into two components - a physiological and a behavioural effect - is proposed by use of the Cox hazard model with three dummy variables that indicate the time of child death and the status of breastfeeding with reference to the return of menstruation postpartum. An application of the method to the 1991 Bangladesh Contraceptive Prevalence Survey data suggests that the effect from the physiological mechanism outweighed the effect from the behaviourial mechanism (the former effect raising the hazard of an additional birth by nearly 90%). It appears that the effect of a child death declined over time and an early cessation of breastfeeding was not the sole cause for invoking the physiological mechanism. The risk of childbirth rose sharply among the educated if their children died, although the main effect of education itself was to reduce the risk.
English - pp. 345-356.
C. Bin Park, School of Public Health, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.
(BANGLADESH, INFANT MORTALITY, CHILD MORTALITY, FERTILITY DETERMINANTS, METHODOLOGY)
Famine, disease, and mortality patterns in the parish of Borshevka, Russia, 1830-1912.
Scholars have projected a dismal image of 19th-century, rural Russia as a society repeatedly punctuated by crop failures, famine, starvation, and epidemics of famine-related diseases. But there has been no rigorous attempt, using appropriate methods, to assess the nature of demographic crises in Russia and their contribution to overall mortality and population growth. The pattern of mortality evident in the parish under examination is distinguished by an extremely high incidence of infant, diarrhoeal diseases and childhood, infectious diseases. This unfavourable disease environment and resulting high rates of infant and early childhood mortality were more closely related to fertility levels, household size, housing conditions, and weaning practices than to annual or seasonal food availability and the nutritional status of the population. In a disease-driven society, the susceptibility to infection and the force of infection can, to a considerable extent, be determined by demographic factors, familial norms, and climatic constraints.
English - pp. 357-368.
S. L. Hoch, Department of History, University of Iowa, U.S.A.
(RUSSIA, HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY, PARISHES, MORTALITY, FOOD SHORTAGE, MORBIDITY, MORTALITY DETERMINANTS)
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