Desired Fertility and Number of Children Born Across Time and Space

Demography
Isabel Günther, Kenneth Harttgen

Abstract

Economists have often argued that high fertility rates are mainly driven by women's demand for children (and not by family planning efforts) with low levels of unwanted fertility across countries (and hence with little room for family planning efforts to reduce population growth). We study the relationship between wanted fertility and number of children born in a panel of 200 country-years controlling for country fixed effects and global time trends. In general, we find a close relationship between wanted and actual fertility, with one desired child leading to one additional birth. However, our results also indicate that in the last 20 years, the level of unwanted births has stayed at 2 across African countries but has, on average, decreased from 1 to close to 0 in other developing countries. Hence, women in African countries are less able to translate child preferences into birth outcomes than women in other developing countries, and forces other than fertility demand have been important for previous fertility declines in many developing countries. Family planning efforts only partially explain the observed temporal and spatial differences in achieving desired fertility levels.

References

Mar 29, 2003·Science·Wolfgang LutzSergei Scherbov
Feb 1, 2008·Demography·John B Casterline, Laila O El-Zeini
Aug 6, 2008·Studies in Family Planning·John Bongaarts
Aug 8, 2009·Nature·Mikko MyrskyläFrancesco C Billari
Jul 30, 2011·Science·Jocelyn Kaiser
Jul 30, 2011·Science·John Bongaarts, Steven Sinding
Jan 10, 2012·International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health·John Bongaarts
Aug 16, 2012·Population Studies·Tom A MoultrieIan M Timæus

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Citations

May 18, 2016·Lancet·Diana Greene Foster
Oct 2, 2020·Demography·Sara YeatmanSarah Garver
Jul 12, 2017·Demography·Pierluigi ConzoLetizia Mencarini
Apr 2, 2020·Population Studies·Kathleen Broussard, Abigail Weitzman
Apr 27, 2018·Population and Development Review·Jenny Trinitapoli, Sara Yeatman
Jun 23, 2019·Maternal and Child Health Journal·Ashley Larsen Gibby, Nancy Luke

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