Postponement and limitation of childbearing in the transition to low - PDF document

Postponement and limitation of childbearing in the transition to low fertility in the developing world Ian M. Timæus 1,2 and Tom A. Moultrie 2 1 Department of Population Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; 2 Centre for Actuarial Research, University of Cape Town. (email: ian.timaeus@lshtm.ac.uk) Abstract This paper examines the contribution that postponement of births, as opposed to parity-specific limitation of family size, has made to the global transition to low fertility. It investigates whether the role of postponement varies across sub-Saharan Africa and whether it is important elsewhere. We use survival analysis to model data from 297 fertility surveys in 78 countries and assess changes in period parity progression, the median length of closed birth intervals, and duration-specific fertility. Outside sub-Saharan Africa, fertility transition is dominated by parity-specific limitation. Equally, births are now being postponed in many countries and birth intervals are lengthening. Where progression has dropped in sub-Saharan Africa, it has not done so on a parity-specific basis. Birth intervals are lengthening almost everywhere in the region and, at every level of overall fertility, are longer than elsewhere in the world. A few countries outside sub-Saharan Africa have undergone an ‘African’ transit ion. Moreover, a few others have experienced an across the board decline in period fertility characterised by neither stopping nor postponement. We conclude that postponement is a family-building strategy of global significance. Nevertheless, fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa is following a different track from that taken by most other countries in which postponement alone has driven down fertility. The pace of fertility decline in the region will remain slow until women start limiting their family sizes as well as postponing having another birth. Introduction This paper examines the transition to low fertility across the developing world. It investigates the extent to which fertility decline has been driven by the parity-specific limitation of family size in different regions of the world. In earlier papers, we have argued that the initial phases of fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa have been characterised by substantial lengthening of birth intervals (Moultrie and Timaeus 2003; Moultrie, Sayi and Timæus 2012). This, we propose, reflects postponement of births, which we conceptualise as a third motivation for birth control, distinct from both limitation and spacing (Timæus and Moultrie 2008). Postponers have decided neither that they have enough surviving children nor that they want another child once their youngest child is old enough. Rather they are deferring the decision as to whether and when they want more children – they have decided only that they want no more for the moment. Their efforts to avoid childbearing reflect not their reproductive histories (the number, ages and survival of their children), but other circumstances in their lives. This interpretation of women’s motiv es for adopting birth control accords with evidence from qualitative research in several parts of Africa (Agadjanian 2005; Johnson-Hanks 2004; Towriss et al. 2017). In a recent paper, Casterline and Odden (2016b) have argued that birth intervals have lengthened substantially in the course of fertility transition not just in sub-Saharan Africa but in many other non-Western countries. In a follow-up article, they present evidence Draft: 21 Oct. 2017. Please ask the authors for an up-to-date version before citing. 1

that indicates that this trend is underlain by the widespread postponement of births (Casterline and Odden 2016a). They conclude: ‘ Do the available empirical data support the claim that postponement is a distinctly African phenomenon? Our conclusion is No … there is abundant evidence of postponement in other regions; … But even so, is postponement far more prevalent in Sub‐Saharan Africa? Here the evidence is mixed.’ On this basis, they are sceptical about the claim that was encapsulated in the title of our 2012 article that Africa is experiencing ‘ a new kind of transition ’ . Casterline and Odden’s identification of postponement outside Africa is important. It widens the challenge that our own work has posed to conventional demographic conceptualisations of women’s reasons for adopting birth control. It has never been our position, however, that postponement is restricted to Africa: this is not something that we have investigated previously. What we have argued is that in sub-Saharan Africa: ‘ birth intervals are largely independent of mother’s age and parity. By contrast, data from selected less developed countries in other regions, and from Europe early in its fertility transition, exhibit very different patterns ’ (Moultrie, Sayi and Timæus 2012). Thus, our hypothesis is that postponement has emerged as a relatively important driver of fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa because parity-specific limitation of family size has been less prevalent in this region than elsewhere in the world. This paper has two principal aims. First it uses a standardised analytical framework to examine the contributions that stopping, spacing and postponement have made to fertility decline in as many countries as possible. In particular, the paper assesses our hypothesis that parity-specific family-size limitation has played a limited role in fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa against evidence from developing regions across the world. Second, we investigate further whether, as Casterline and Odden (2016a) suggest, patterns of fertility decline differ within sub-Saharan Africa, with postponement being confined largely to the south of the region while declines elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa ‘ have been driven primarily by limiting rather than postponement ’ . Data and methods Our analysis uses the data from 297 World Fertility Survey (WFS) surveys, Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), and Reproductive Health Surveys (RHS) from 78 countries to investigate trends and patterns in family formation over the course of their fertility transitions. The WFS was conducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and collected full birth histories that allow one to look back a further 15 years. Our analysis therefore covers the period from the mid-1960s through to the present day. This database of demographic surveys includes every DHS in the public domain in early 2017 and all the RHS that collected birth histories. It largely overlaps with that assembled by Casterline and Odden (2016a) but includes a few more WFS and several surveys conducted in 2014 – 15 and excludes four Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys and nine WFS surveys of countries that have not conducted a fertility survey subsequently. Nearly half the surveys were conducted in sub-Saharan Africa, but the database includes surveys from most parts of the world apart from Western Europe, North America, Australasia and Oceania (Table 1). It does not include China. Draft: 21 Oct. 2017. Please ask the authors for an up-to-date version before citing. 2