The demography of words: The global decline in non-numeric fertility preferences, 1993–2011

Abstract

This paper examines the decline in non-numeric responses to questions about fertility preferences among women in the developing world. These types of response—such as ‘don’t know’ or ‘it’s up to God’—have often been interpreted through the lens of fertility transition theory as an indication that reproduction has not yet entered women’s ‘calculus of conscious choice’. However, this has yet to be investigated cross-nationally and over time. Using 19 years of data from 32 countries, we find that non-numeric fertility preferences decline most substantially in the early stages of a country’s fertility transition. Using country-specific and multilevel models, we explore the individual- and contextual-level characteristics associated with women’s likelihood of providing a non-numeric response to questions about their fertility preferences. Non-numeric fertility preferences are influenced by a host of social factors, with educational attainment and knowledge of contraception being the most robust and consistent predictors.

Keywords:

• fertility transitions
• fertility preferences
• non-numeric responses

Notes

1 Margaret Frye is at the Department of Sociology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. Lauren Bachan is at Pennsylvania State University.

2 Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2013 meeting of the Population Association of America (New Orleans, LA, USA) and the 2013 meeting of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (Busan, South Korea).

3 This research was supported by funding from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Population Research Infrastructure Grant R24-HD041025 and Interdisciplinary Training Grants T32 HD007514 and T32 HD00727527). The authors would also like to thank German Rodriguez, Brandon Stewart, John Casterline, Sarah Hayford, Alexandra Killewald, and Emily Smith-Greenaway for their helpful comments on initial versions of this paper.