TOPIC 4: FERTILITY Definition
Issues & Challenges in Fertility
Fertility in Malaysia
Basic Concepts
Ways of Measuring Fertility
DEFINITION
Fertility refers to the actual number of children born. This is distinguished from fecundity, or the biological maximum number of children that could be born.
General Overviews on Fertility • • • •
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Fertility means an ability to provide life or produce children naturally and actual occurrence of birth. Fertility is important because it ensures the continuity of the generation. Fertility affects both male and female. Women’s fertility is affected by the childbearing age (normally between 15-49 year-old) whilst men’s fertility is commonly affected by particular lifestyle (eg. Smoking, free-sex etc.). Obviously, a country’s level of fertility is a major source of population change. Modernity has a strong effect on fertility in that births are lowered in advanced societies. Conversely, the least developed nations have the highest fertility.
Factors Affecting Fertility •
Fertility is subject to biological factors affecting fecundity.
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It commences at puberty (about age fifteen) and has a tendency to decline with advancing age.
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For women it ceases at the menopause (beginning 45) but there is no corresponding upper age-limit for men.
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Fertility depends to some extent on personal attitudes, aspirations, intelligence and education.
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It may also been influenced, directly or indirectly, by government policy of one kind or another and by economic circumstances.
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It also varies according to occupation, social status, region and cultural practices.
Example-Cultural Factor • • • • •
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The highest fertility rates in the world is in Rwanda, an East African nation of 10,000 square miles and 7.2 million people , or 720 persons per square mile. The fertility rate in Rwanda is 8.5 children per woman of childbearing age. The country is rural and its economy is agricultural; but it does not have enough farmable land to support such a large number of people. Rwanda is a male-dominated society. The majority of women work in agriculture, and more than half are illiterate. Rwandan men believe that fathering children is a sign of manhood; they object to birth control measures for their wives not only because they want to continue to father children but also because they think birth control pills will make their wives weak and unable to work in the fields. From the women viewpoint, the more children they have, the more stable their marriages; children also help in the fields, thereby lightening the mother’s workload and helping protect her from abuse from the father. Since women cannot inherit property under Rwandan Law, children are about the only measure of status that accrues directly to a woman. Therefore, the women also feel they benefit from having large families.
China’s One Child Policy
Baby Boom in America 1946-1960s
St. Joseph Hospital, Chicago, 1941
BASIC CONCEPTS Concept
Definition
Total Fertility Rate (TFR)
The total number of children a woman would bear during her lifetime if she were to experience the prevailing agespecific fertility rates of women.
Gross Reproduction Rate (GRR)
The number of baby girls a cohort will have. It assumes that all of the baby girls will grow up and live to at least age 50.
Net Reproduction Rate (NRR)
The NRR starts with the GRR and adds the realistic assumption that some of the women will die before age 59; therefore they will not be alive to bear some of the potential babies that were counted in the GRR.
Concept
Definition
Family size
Number of children in a family
Legitimacy
Birth to married couple
Illegitimacy
Births to the unmarried female population at the reproductive ages. This population includes the single, widows, and divorced, the assumption being that there are no illegitimate births to married women, that is, births where the father is not the husband.
WAYS OF MEASURING FERTILITY Ways of Measurement
Explanation
Period measure
Refer to a cross-sectional calculation of the population in one year.
Cohort measure
Follows the same people over a period of decades.
Period Measure •
Period measure refers to a cross-sectional calculation of the population in one year.
The Crude Birth Rate • Since women rarely have the maximum number of children of which they are capable, the fertility of a society is normally quiet a bit lower than its fecundity. • The simplest measure of fertility is the crude birth rate – the number of live birth occurring in a particular population during a given year for each 1000 people in that population. • This method of calculating fertility is crude because it ignores the age and sex structure of populations. The General Fertility Rate • A more refined measure is the general fertility rate – the number of live births per year per 1000 women of childbearing age, generally considered between fifteen and fourty-four years of age. • This general fertility rate provides a more accurate view of how “fertile” a society is because it is calculated using only women who are in the age bracket where they might have children.
Total Fertility Rate • Demographers also use another period measure of fertility called the total fertility rate, which is the average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime, based on current birth rates. • With today’s birth rates, for example, women average about 1.8 children in contrast to 2.5 children in 1940.
Cohort Measure •
Cohort measure follows the same people over a period of decades.
Age-Specific Birth Rate • For other purposes, demographers use age-specific birth rates that calculate the number of births among women in a particular age category (eg. 10-14, 15-19, 20-24) . • In fact, the slow increase in the birth rate since 1976 can be attributed in part to the number of women who had delayed having children and then decided in their thirties to have at least one child. • Some demographers have even referred to this as a “baby boomlet” since the number of births to women between thirty and thirty-nine years of age more than doubled.
Fertility Trends in Malaysia •
Currently, fertility rate in Malaysia is 2.64 children born per woman.
Min number of children born by age and ethnicity (2004) Age
Malay
Chinese
Indian
Total
15-19
0.6
1.0
0.9
0.7
20-24
1.0
1.6
1.1
1.2
25-29
1.8
1.7
1.7
1.8
30-34
2.8
2.2
2.8
2.6
35-39
3.9
2.7
2.8
3.4
40-44
4.6
3.1
3.2
3.9
45-49
4.7
3.0
3.3
3.9
Factors Affecting Fertility Rate in Malaysia At macro level • Government policy of family planning: - National Family Planning Act 1966. At Micro level • Individual and family dynamics: - Higher socioeconomic status, women in education and labor force, changing in lifestyles. - View that a better quality of family life can be achieved by a smaller number of children. - Higher level of education, less children; negative correlation ” Simultaneously, expanded educational and career options for women and, consequently, their growing commitment to paid work have given women increased economic independence. One result is that more women are voluntarily choosing singlehood and like it” Swartz in Lamanna dan Riedmann ( 2005 )
ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN FERTILITY • • •
Population of four or five times necessarily caused some socio-economic implications. Effects of such population expansion will look felt at all levels of life especially of national resources. Among the areas of the field will be involved are as follows:
Food Supply • Most food items have to be imported and this will cause food security problems and foreign exchange. Therefore the study should be made about land use and potential use of other sources. Housing • At least 10 million units of housing will be needed to accommodate the additional population of 50 million and this will take about 100 years according to current building rates.
Jobs • More than 20 million new jobs must be created. Thus it is important to move the labor force becomes disciplined, motivated and productive. Health • Number of hospital beds should be increased from 25 thousand to 140.000 if the current long-term goal of 2 beds for every 1,000 population to be achieved. Number of doctors already should be increased from 4.200 to over 30,000. Education • Place for 15 million shall be provided and at least 4000.000 teachers needed. Water Supply • Water use is expected by 15.6 billion cubic meters. Lack of water has already been anticipated in 2000 for a total population of 21 million. Energy Consumption • Energy consumption will increase by 4 or 5 times this will double again with the industrial economy. This problem will be more complicated because the achievement of 70 million will occur in Malaysia have run out of oil and gas (post-Hydrocarbon).
