The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries Selected Studies (2005) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
3 Small Families and Large Cohorts: The Impact of the Demographic Transition on Schooling in Brazil--David A. Lam and Letícia Marteleto
3 Small Families and Large Cohorts: The Impact of the Demographic Transition on Schooling in Brazil--David A. Lam and Letícia Marteleto
Pages 56-83
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 56... ...
During a substantial period of the demographic transition, it is common to observe family size decreasing at the same time that cohort size is increasing. From the standpoint of a child entering school, these changes may imply offsetting effects.
|
From page 57... ...
We find that the growth rates of cohort size of the school-age population tended to reduce school enrollment rates in the 1980s and helped increase enrollment in the 1990s. Decreasing family size and increasing parental schooling both tended to increase enrollment in all periods, with parental schooling having the largest impact.
|
From page 58... ...
Using aggregate crossnational data on age structure, school enrollments, and school expenditures, Schultz found no significant effect on school enrollment rates of the proportion of the population in school age. He also found no noticeable effect of relative cohort size on the shares of gross national product (GNP)
|
From page 59... ...
We will include measures of the numbers of siblings in our analysis of schooling outcomes below, and will use the estimated impact of the numbers of siblings to predict how declining family size might be a factor driving the increasing school enrollment rates. The Demographic Transition and Cohort Size Brazil's demographic transition is fairly typical of those observed throughout the developing world in recent decades.
|
From page 60... ...
Table 3-1 also shows the population size and annual growth rates for the country from 1940 to 2000. Brazil experienced rapid population growth during the second half of the twentieth century, with the annual growth rate peaking at 3 percent in the 1950-1960 period.
|
From page 61... ...
The decline in cohort size after the peak in the early 1980s is also uneven, with cohort size actually increasing again during the early 1990s. This is not due to an increase in fertility, which falls rapidly throughout the period, but to an increase in women of childbearing age as an "echo" of the rapid cohort growth of the
|
From page 62... ...
We use the cohort size numbers in Figure 3-1 to generate the number of children ages 7 to 14 and their growth rate for each calendar year. Figure 3-2 shows the absolute size of the population ages 7-14 in each year, using 1965 as a reference year, along with the annual percentage growth rate for
|
From page 63... ...
We will look at the impact of population size using the growth rate of the population ages 7 to 14, estimated using a combination of state population estimates based on census data and single-year age distributions for each state estimated using the PNAD. We take advantage of the rich microdata of the PNAD to generate measures of family size and other characteristics such as age and parents' schooling measured at the household level.
|
From page 64... ...
TABLE 3-2 Comparison of Selected Sample with Sample of all Children, Brazil Pesquisa Nacional de Amostra de Domicílios, 1977-1999 Children of Children of Head with Full Sample Household Head Both Parents Present Age 10 N 186,943 169,547 149,265 Weighted N 64,310,952 58,464,389 51,717,218 Percentage of full sample 100.0 90.9 80.4 Mean schooling 1.63 1.65 1.66 Enrollment rate (%) 88.9 89.2 89.5 Age 14 N 181,200 160,860 135,570 Weighted N 62,121,671 55,678,826 47,186,042 Percentage of full sample 100.0 89.6 76.0 Mean schooling 4.03 4.09 4.12 Enrollment rate (%)
|
From page 65... ...
Table 3-3 shows the mean number of siblings ages 0 to 6 and 7 to 17 in the household for children ages 7 to 17, estimated from the annual PNAD surveys. The average number of siblings ages 0 to 6 declined more than 50 TABLE 3-3 Number of Siblings in Household and Schooling of Parents, Brazilian Children Ages 7-17, 1977-1999 Pesquisa Nacional de Amostra de Domicílios Number of Siblings in Household Mother's Father's Urban Year N Ages 0-6 Ages 7-17 Schooling Schooling % 1977 107,105 1.17 2.45 2.51 2.75 60.54 1978 110,447 1.15 2.40 2.53 2.77 61.19 1979 90,035 1.11 2.36 2.65 2.88 61.55 1981 97,705 1.05 2.23 2.78 2.98 64.95 1982 102,134 1.03 2.15 2.82 2.98 65.30 1983 102,097 1.00 2.10 2.94 3.12 65.97 1984 100,944 0.97 2.05 3.10 3.24 66.25 1985 101,010 0.94 1.98 3.28 3.38 67.25 1986 56,007 0.90 1.91 3.48 3.58 67.24 1987 58,316 0.87 1.88 3.59 3.67 67.38 1988 58,465 0.80 1.85 3.77 3.77 68.37 1989 59,171 0.77 1.82 3.96 3.96 68.78 1990 60,333 0.73 1.77 4.08 4.05 68.40 1992 58,964 0.64 1.66 4.31 4.30 73.83 1993 60,450 0.61 1.63 4.45 4.38 73.74 1995 61,420 0.55 1.53 4.73 4.59 74.96 1996 59,395 0.52 1.49 4.93 4.80 75.09 1997 60,398 0.52 1.42 5.02 4.84 74.96 1998 58,291 0.50 1.38 5.23 5.02 74.56 1999 57,693 0.49 1.34 5.12 5.07 74.24 TOTALS 1,520,380 0.80 1.85 3.82 3.85 68.98 1999 minus 1977 0.68 1.10 2.61 2.32 13.70 Percentage change 58.10 45.18 104.11 84.38 22.63 SOURCE: PNADs 1977-1999.
|
From page 66... ...
, the distribution of children across family sizes has changed considerably over the past three decades, with a large reduction in the number of families with more than four children. Table 3-3 also shows that the level of parents' education has increased substantially throughout the period studied.
|
From page 67... ...
Increases in enrollment rates 1.00 0.90 0.80 enrolled 0.70 Proportion 0.60 Females age 12 0.50 Males ageage Females 1214 Males ageage 14 Males age 1616 Females 0.401977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 Year FIGURE 3-4 School enrollment rate by age, males and females, Brazil 1977-1999. NOTE: Sample is children of household head with both parents present.
|
From page 68... ...
Modeling School Enrollment As a framework for estimating the impact of cohort size and family characteristics on school enrollment, we assume that the decision to enroll a child in school is based on some evaluation by the family and child of the relative costs and benefits of school enrollment. Although school enrollment is technically mandatory until age 14 in Brazil, we have seen that
|
From page 69... ...
Some of the family size variables we include in our analysis will be related to these issues of opportunity cost. The growth rate of the school-age population may affect the cost of schooling, because school crowding may require some students to travel farther to school or attend school at inconvenient times.
|
From page 70... ...
where Y is a latent variable indicating the net payoff to school enrollment, Gst is the growth rate of the population ages 7 to 14, Zist is a vector of characteristics at the family level, including family size and parental schooling, us is a fixed effect for the state or region, vt is a period-specific effect, and eist is an idiosyncratic stochastic term that is assumed to be normally distributed and uncorrelated with all of the other right-hand-side variables. The child enrolls in school if Y > 0.
|
From page 71... ...
The identification of any cohort size effect comes from deviations in the rate of cohort growth in particular regions relative to the mean cohort growth for Brazil as a whole. Regression Results Table 3-4 provides results of probit regressions for several alternative specifications.
|
From page 72... ...
Regressions schooling female age father's minus 0-6 7-17 X X X squared squared Probit population female (age father's ages ages 0-6 0-6 0-6 of X X X 3-4 rate rate rate rate schooling schooling schooling schooling siblings siblings siblings siblings siblings of of of of of 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1979 1981 1982 TABLE Variable Growth Growth Growth Growth No.
|
From page 73... ...
73 ages a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a b a a head (0.007)
|
From page 74... ...
To simplify interpretation, the age variable in the interaction is defined as age minus 14, meaning that the main effect for cohort growth is measured for 14-year-olds. Regression 1 shows a statistically significant negative effect of the school-age population growth rate on the school enrollment rate, consistent with our expectations.
|
From page 75... ...
It is important to recall, however, that this coefficient may be significantly biased downward in absolute value due to measurement error in the cohort size growth rate. The estimated effect of cohort growth in Regression 1 may be biased due to the correlation of cohort growth with a number of omitted variables.
|
From page 76... ...
For a 16-year-old boy in the urban northeast in 1999 with no parental schooling and one sibling in each age group, the impact of an increase in cohort growth from 0 to 3 percent per year would be a decline in the probability of school enrollment from 59.4 percent to 57.8 percent. The year dummies in Regression 2 and Regression 3 indicate large increases in enrollment over time, even after controlling for parental schooling, cohort growth, and family size.
|
From page 77... ...
Series 3 in Figure 3-5 simulates the school enrollment rate using the coefficients from Regression 3 and the actual changes in the school-age population growth rate, parental schooling, and family size observed over the period (estimated using the sample of 16-year-old urban males)
|
From page 78... ...
The difficult economic situation of the 1980s, which are swept away in our estimation by the single-year dummies, is one possible reason why enrollment grew more slowly in the 1980s than changes in parental schooling, family size, and cohort growth would have predicted. Series 4 shows the effect of holding all other variables constant while allowing the parental schooling variables to vary.
|
From page 79... ...
Because both family size and parental schooling grow quite steadily over the 1980s and 1990s, cohort growth is the only variable in our regression with the
|
From page 80... ...
In considering the impact of these changes on schooling outcomes, one of the important features of the demographic transition is that family size and cohort size move in opposite directions during much of the transition. Declining fertility rates compete with population momentum to determine the size of birth cohorts, with the increasing numbers of childbearing-age women outpacing the declining fertility rates for many years of the transition.
|
From page 81... ...
Our simulated counterfactuals suggest that declining family size was one of the factors contributing to the rising school enrollment rates of the 1990s. By far the most important explanatory factor in our analysis is parental schooling, with large positive effects of both mother's and father's schooling on children's school enrollment.
|
From page 82... ...
. The effect of family size on family welfare.
|
From page 83... ...
. Family size, schooling, and child labor in Peru: An empirical analysis.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.