![Sample our Geography journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5937/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Geography.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The role of government policy in fertility change has been a central inquiry in understanding global demographic changes in the last half century. We return to this inquiry with longitudinal data for over 150 countries from 1976 to 2013 and use fixed-effects models to address common methodological concerns. Our results reveal that while government anti-natalist policies fail to show clear effects for all countries included, they are associated with significantly lower fertility in Asia and Latin America, two regions that have seen the most rapid fertility decline. For pro-natalist policies, which are becoming more popular in recent years, we detect only short-term positive effects, and effects limited to countries where fertility has not sunk below the ultra-low level of 1.4 children per woman. Combined, these results suggest that government policies are important in global fertility change, though the policy impacts vary by geographic location, timing, and fertility level.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The family planning program effort score was constructed for 100 developing countries in 1982, based on responses of 600 high-level program administrators (Mauldin & Lapham, Citation1985). ‘Maintain’ refers to policies to maintain fertility at current levels (either current high levels or low levels), and ‘No Interventions’ means government are not intervening to influence fertility (United Nations, Citation2013). For instance, in the three waves of 1976, 1986 and 1996, the Chinese government reported to enforce ‘lower’ policy and considered the current fertility as ‘too high,’ and since the 2001 survey, the government stated to change the type of policy to ‘maintain’, aiming to maintain the current low level of fertility. And for the United States, the government reported ‘no intervention’ in all surveys.
2 The family planning program effort score was constructed for 100 developing countries in 1982, based on responses of 600 high-level program administrators (Mauldin & Lapham, Citation1985).
3 Such is the case in three countries we describe here: in Thailand, an Asian case with low fertility now, Ethiopia, a country in Africa with high fertility, and Cuba, a country in Latin America that has also seen fertility decline. Thailand promoted a voluntary family planning program with the slogan of ‘the more children, the poorer’ between 1970 and 1996, and then shifted to a policy to maintain fertility at the replacement level to achieve a balanced population between 1997 and 2011. When its fertility level dropped to as low as around 1.5 children per woman in 2011, the Thai government introduced policies such as providing tax incentives and child-related welfare incentives to encourage higher fertility (Thai Health Working Group, Citation2012). Correspondingly, as shown in our data, the Thai government stated its policy as ‘to lower fertility’ in the 1976, 1986, and 1996 waves of surveys, as ‘to maintain fertility’ between 2001 and 2009, and as ‘to raise fertility’ in the 2011 and 2013 waves of surveys. In the case of Ethiopia, the government adopted its first national population policy in 1993, with one of the aims as to reduce TFR from 7.7 to 4.0 by 2015 (Olson & Piller, Citation2013). Our data confirm that the government-stated policy in Ethiopia turned from ‘no intervention’ in 1986 to anti-natal in 1996. Similarly, in Cuba, where the government started assisted reproductive service program to help people realise their dreams of becoming parents in 2010, its stated policy changed to pro-natal since the 2011 survey.
4 We also run the Hausman test to compare fixed and random effects models. The null hypothesis in each test is rejected, indicating that the fixed effects model is the preferred model. These results are available upon request.
5 We also used TFR with a ten-year time lag as the outcome variable to examine policy impacts in the longer term, and the results do not differ from the medium-term policy impacts.
6 The 2012 London Summit was co-sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Government, in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund, national governments, other donors, civil society, and agencies from other sectors. The Summit issued a call for global and national commitments to enable 120 million more women and girls to use contraceptives by 2020.