Due to the high population growth rate in the mid-20th century, the government of Ghana introduced population policies to reduce the population growth rate. Encouraging girls’ education and increasing contraceptive use were the two main policy measures to reduce population growth. Subsequently, the total fertility rate (TFR) declined rapidly from 6.0 in 1985 to 4.3 in 2003. Using 2003 Ghana Dem...

We present an alternative explanation of the positive relationship between total fertility rate (TFR) and female labor participation rate (FLPR) observed in recent cross section of OECD countries. We first use a simple model of consumer behavior where consumption good is indexed by quality, both consumption and child rearing require time and a physical good as inputs. The model predicts that wh...

Rates of total fertility (TFR) in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh are 2.5 and 2.6 children per woman, respectively. The practice of family planning in these states has therefore successfully reduced overall fertility. Uttar Pradesh, however, with a TFR of 4.8, by far the highest fertility of any state in India, still has a long way to go before achieving replacement fertility. This paper compa...

In 2019, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) dipped to 1.71 children per woman, an all-time low and far below replacement rate of 2.10 children. Current levels fertility have important implications for economy. To assess trends, demographers often look at expectations. Using this metric suggests no cause concern. Women in their early 30s today, when first asked about childbearing expectations 20s, e...

Working papers of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research receive only limited review. Views or opinions expressed in working papers are attributable to the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute. 2 1. Introduction The enormous social, economic, and political changes in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 were associated with an abrupt fall in fertility. In ...

CONTEXT The age of puberty has fallen over the past 130 years in industrialized, western countries, and this fall is widely referred to as the secular trend for earlier puberty. The current study was undertaken to test two evolutionary theories: (a) the reproductive system maximizes the number of offspring in response to positive environmental cues in terms of energy balance, and (b) early pube...

BACKGROUND While recent studies have indicated that fertility has remained high in Uganda, no systematic attempt has been made to identify the factors responsible for this persistent trend and to quantify these factors. This paper uses the Uganda Demographic and Health Surveys (UDHS) of 2006 and 2011, to examine the contribution contraceptive use, marriage and postpartum infecundability on one ...

BACKGROUND The United Nations (UN) Population Division produces probabilistic projections for the total fertility rate (TFR) using the Bayesian hierarchical model of Alkema et al. (2011), which produces predictive distributions of the TFR for individual countries. The UN is interested in publishing probabilistic projections for aggregates of countries, such as regions and trading blocs. This re...

OBJECTIVE Increasing age at first childbirth has been suggested to increase the risk for infertility. Our objective is to determine whether women above thirty years of age historically have been able to sustain fertility rates above replacement level. DESIGN A descriptive nationwide Danish study using birth registries from 1901-2014. SETTING Information on women's age at childbirth was obta...

Background China has experienced an obvious fertility drop since the 1990s. Researches showed that social-economic growth played a more significant role than birth control policy in the process (Chen, 2005; Li, 2004). Analysis by Cai (2008) found that economic indicators are significantly related to total fertility rates in counties of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. However, there is a lack of analysis ...