Determinants of Fertility Rates in Turkey

ABSTRACT

In this study, the fertility changes are examined through the combining political and economic aspects of Turkey. For this purpose, it examines if a long-run relationship between economic and institutional variables and fertility rates of Turkey exists. The long-run relations between income, democracy, polarization, government spending, and fertility rates will thus be analyzed through the Autoregressive Distribute Lag (ARDL) cointegration technique. The results reveal that per capita income, government expenditure, and democracy are one of the key determinants of fertility. Per capita income and government expenditure are negatively associated with fertility, but democracy is positively associated with fertility. The results further showed that the fertility decline is robust after the implementation of compulsory education policy in 1997. The study enlightens the long run effect of government on fertility behavior either through policy implementation or government expenditure, but the association between fertility and institutions in Turkey is rather vague.

KEYWORDS:

• Fertility
• Cointegration
• Political institutions

Notes

1. Democracy indices of Turkey from dataset of Polity IV: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions show that in in 1971, 1972, 1980, 1981 and 1982, the indices are scored as 2, in 2014 and 2015 they are scored as 4, in the rest of the dataset, indices are either 7, or 8 or 9.

2. CNNTURK. “If women in Turkey do not give birth to 3 children, we (Turkey) will be like Germany” http://www.cnnturk.com/2012/dunya/10/31/uc.cocuk.dogurmazsak.almanya.gibi.oluruz/682535.0/index.html, accessed, 01.02.2016.

3. Cumhuriyet, http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/siyaset/1373841/Erdogan___Dogum_kontrolunu_dogru_bulmuyorum_.html, accessed, 26.06.2019.

4. Crude birth rates (CBR) (per 1000 people) can also be used in this study for measuring the changes in the birth rates. Crude birth rate shows the number of live births occurring during the year, per 1,000 population. TFR is directly related to a woman and its capacity and dependent on some other parameters such as the age and marital status, etc., but CBR is based on the entire population. However, unit root tests of CBR which can be found in Table 2 do not allow me to use long run empirical model, therefore cannot be tested in this study.

5. Some of macroeconomic data related to Turkey are in fact available before 1960s, but as Farooq and Tuncer (1974) stated, censuses before 1945 provided either scarce or unreliable information. Therefore, for those variables, WDIs are used in this study. Besides, GDP per capita data is also available in 2017.

6. Pigou-Dalton principle of transfers: If an income transfer from a poorer to a richer person in the income distribution is made, inequality rises.

7. Since China and Turkey has gone through different political and economic processes, the empirical model is differentiated from the empirical model suggested by Feng (2005).