From Death to Birth Mortality Decline and Reproductive Change (1998) / Chapter Skim
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9 The Relationship Between Infant and Child Mortality and Subsequent Fertility in Indonesia: 1971-1991
9 The Relationship Between Infant and Child Mortality and Subsequent Fertility in Indonesia: 1971-1991
Pages 316-338
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From page 316... ...
Work on the link between mortality and fertility has sought to answer a variety of questions, some only tangentially related to the "bottom line" of how fertility levels and population growth rates change as mortality declines. Most theoretical models of fertility response make predictions about conscious behavioral responses to actual or expected child deaths, given assumptions about couples' family formation goals.
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From page 317... ...
Empirical work has focused both on identifying the types of responses to mortality and on quantifying the ultimate effect of child death on completed family size (Olsen, 1980; Mauskopf and Wallace, 1984; Mensch, 1985; Heer and Wu, 1978~. Fertility-related outcomes of interest include completed family size, parity progression ratios, interbirth intervals, and contraceptive use.
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From page 318... ...
Simultaneously, a fairly intensive public health campaign began and mortality declined. Estimates of infant mortality rates from Jakarta, Surabaya, and Wonosobo (a region of central Java)
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From page 319... ...
These data put the total fertility rate at 3.4 per woman and the infant mortality rate at 70.2 per 1,000 births for the 1982-1987 period (Central Bureau of Statistics et al., 1989~. The 1991 DHS collected information from 22,909 ever-married women between the ages of 15 and 49.
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From page 320... ...
The 1994 DHS data put Indonesia's fertility rate at 2.85 for the 1991-1994 period and the infant mortality rate at 57 per 1,000 (Central Bureau of Statistics et al., 1995)
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From page 321... ...
These reasons highlight the statistical pitfalls associated with analyses of links between child mortality and subsequent fertility. Some of the reasons also explain positive correlations between child mortality and other aspects of reproductive patterns.
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From page 322... ...
Differences in completed family size by mortality experience are one of several potential indicators of a fertility response to child mortality. Other measures that are easier to work with, given the existence of surveys of women of reproductive age, are parity progression ratios and birth intervals.
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From page 323... ...
Because these indicators can be computed for women regardless of whether they have finished childbearing, they are well suited for use with demographic data. Comparison of parity progression ratios or birth intervals for women with differing child mortality experiences can indicate the degree to which very specific components of reproductive patterns vary by survival status, but say little about how levels of completed fertility are likely to change as mortality declines.
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From page 324... ...
Although the total number of births is consistently larger for women who lost a first or second child than for women whose first and second child survived, the number of surviving children is smaller for women whose first or second child died. Women who experience a child death early in their reproductive careers go on to have more births, but ultimately smaller numbers of living children than do their counterparts whose early children survive.
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From page 325... ...
I also present other measures of links between child mortality and subsequent fertility common in the demographic literature. Figure 9-3 displays parity progression ratios by the number of children who survived until the birth of the child at the specified parity.
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From page 326... ...
53 2 Surv. succeding parity/surviving children category have declined over time, as expected in a setting where fertility is declining.
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From page 327... ...
First, as desired family size shrinks and fertility falls, there is a corresponding decline in the parity at which differences in behavior by number of living children emerge. Second, within-parity differences in parity progression ratios by number of surviving children increase with time.
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From page 328... ...
. Prior to the 1985-1991 period, birth intervals are remarkably similar in length when the index child survives.
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From page 329... ...
Subsequent birth intervals are shorter when the preceding sibling died than when the preceding sibling survived. Absolute differences in interval lengths, however, are much smaller when it is the preceding sibling rather than the index child who died.
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From page 330... ...
At parities of two through five, subsequent intervals are shorter when the preceding sibling died than when it survived to the birth of the index child. These general patterns prevail across time, in the face of declining levels of fertility and child mortality and increasing availability of contraceptives.
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From page 331... ...
For example, suppose women differ in their level of initiative with respect to use of health and family planning services. Level of initiative is difficult to measure, but is a likely determinant of both child mortality and fertility patterns.
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From page 332... ...
A question that immediately arises is how to implement this approach with data. One could analyze the relationship between two adjacent intervals for any woman who experienced this sequence, controlling for factors such as birth order and survival status of children higher than order n - 1.
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From page 333... ...
My model contains only three variables: whether the first child survives, the sex of the first surviving child, and the sex of the first surviving child interacted with the survival status of the first child.2 The variables correspond to four categories of women: those whose first child survived and is female, those whose first child survived and is male, those whose first child died and whose second child is female, and those whose first child died and whose second child is male. Although evidence on fertility preferences in Indonesia suggest that Indonesians display a strong preference for balance in the overall sex composition of their offspring, it is possible that there are preferences for order (Cleland et al., 1983~.
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From page 334... ...
Nor is the ratio for women whose first child is male and survives statistically significantly different from the ratio for women whose first child died and whose second child is male. The ratio models provide a way to check for a causal relationship between the death of a child and timing of subsequent fertility under the assumption that unobserved woman-specific factors affect both fertility and mortality, so that estimates based on comparisons across women are biased.
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From page 335... ...
Analysis of subsequent birth interval lengths reveals that birth intervals are consistently shorter when either the index child or the preceding sibling of the index child died than when it survived. Differences in interval lengths by survival status are larger when it is the survival status of the index child that is
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From page 336... ...
This mechanism operates in the comparison of interval lengths stratified by the survival status of the index child, but not in the comparison of interval lengths stratified by the survival status of the preceding sibling. The results for birth interval lengths suggest that intervals were on average six months shorter in the late 1980s than they were in earlier penods.
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From page 337... ...
Stupp 1987 Reproductive patterns and child mortality in Guatemala. Demography 24(1)
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From page 338... ...
1984 An estimable dynamic stochastic model of fertility and child mortality. Journal of Politi cal Economy 92(5)
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