Socioeconomic equity and fertility in developing countries: A block-recursive model

Summary This paper explores the interrelationships among fertility and three measurable aspects of socioeconomic equity: life expectancy, schooling, and income distribution. A block-recursive model of interaction among these variables is tested on cross-sectional data for developing countries. The structural results validate the initial hypotheses, with an important exception: income distribution does not act directly on fertility. Taking indirect effects into account, by deriving the reduced form of the system, shows life expectancy and schooling as major determinants of fertility, and income distribution as a lesser influence. The feedback from fertility to income equity considerably exceeds the net effect in the other direction.This paper was completed while the author was a visiting scholar at The Carolina Population Center and Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Richard Bilsborrow, Boone Turchi, and 7. Richard Udry provided helpful comments on an earlier version. Sang E. Lee and V. Panoutsopoulos kindly made available unpublished data from World Bank files.     

AFDC and illegitimacy ratios: a vector-autoregressive model

The expansion of the government programme of Aid to Families of Dependent Children (AFDC) plays a major role in theoretical explanations of the sharply rising trend in US illegitimacy ratios–the proportion of births occurring to unwed mothers. To date, this role has not been supported by empirical evidence. The present study uses a new approach: time-series data and Granger causation. A series of tests shows robust causal impacts of AFDC on non-white illegitimacy ratios. A counterfactual simulation reveals that about half the increase in non-white illegitimacy ratios over the past two decades can be attributed to an ‘AFDC effect’.     

Income redistribution versus accelerated economic growth: a comparison of demographic effects

An attempt is made to identify the effects on fertility and mean expectation of life of varying rates of growth in aggregate income and of changes in the income share of the poorer segments of the population. The extent to which these effects vary among developing countries with different levels of mean income is also considered. An econometric model is developed to estimate the direction and strength of the structural relationships among the key variables, and simulation methods are used to predict the final demographic effects of altering either the growth rate or the size distribution of income. The results suggest that there is no general justification for income redistribution as a means of slowing rates of population growth in a developing country. It may be relevant in the more advanced developing countries, but even in those, more direct means (such as family planning programs, education, and health services) may be more effective. This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the 1983 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (see Population Index, Vol. 49, No. 3, Fall 1983, p. 356).     

Demographic consequences of maternal-leave programs in industrial countries: evidence from fixed-effects models

The authors measure the effects of paid maternity leave upon infant mortality, the labor force participation of women during their prime childbearing years, and fertility rates. To reach their conclusions, they constructed a simultaneous-equations model using the individual fixed-effects method and a data set comprising 17 OECD countries and four time periods. The extension of maternal leave programs, measured in terms of duration of paid leave, is shown to reduce infant mortality, to raise rates of labor force participation for women in the prime childbearing ages, and to increase birth rates. The direct plus indirect impacts of extending maternity leave programs, as revealed by the reduced-form parameters of the authors' models, however, produce a different picture. The total impacts upon both infant mortality and female labor force participation conform closely to the structural estimates, but the impact upon birth rates almost disappears. It seems that the indirect effects of the maternal leave variable, via infant mortality and women's labor force participation, offset the directly pronatal influence. From a policy perspective, the benefits of paid maternal leave programs would seem to be unconditionally positive with respect to lowering infant mortality, and also positive with respect to raising female labor force participation. One should not, however, expect higher birth rates from such programs. The findings also suggest that maternal leave programs can facilitate some increases in women's labor force participation without incurring the reductions in fertility which would otherwise be experienced.