Economic swings and demographic changes in the history of Latin America

Mass Education and Women's Autonomy: Evidence From Latin America

Most low- and middle-income countries have implemented mass education reforms in the last few decades. Demographers and policymakers have posited that mass schooling would enhance women's autonomy and, therefore, accelerate population transformations in the Global South. However, gains in women's schooling may have unexpected implications for female autonomy in contexts where hypergamy norms-the ideal that men should marry down and women should marry up in education and other markers of status-are still dominant. This study addresses difficulties in evaluating the causal impact of additional education on women's autonomy by leveraging the timing of compulsory schooling reforms in three Latin American countries: Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. Using Demographic and Health Surveys, I implement an instrumental variable design using random exposure to compulsory schooling laws as an instrument for years of education. Results show that for women who entered the school system as a result of compulsory reforms, further schooling decreased their level of autonomy in all countries-especially among women from rural Bolivia and Peru. Additional analyses suggest these results are explained by changes in the selection into schooling and the formation of unions defying hypergamy norms. Together, these findings highlight the importance of examining the returns to mass schooling considering population heterogeneity and the contextual meaning of women's education.

Are Wealthier Times Healthier in Cities? Economic Fluctuations and Mortality in Urban Areas of Latin America

Objective: To analyze the relationship between economic conditions and mortality in cities of Latin America. Methods: We analyzed data from 340 urban areas in ten countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and El Salvador. We used panel models adjusted for space-invariant and time-invariant factors to examine whether changes in area gross domestic product (GDP) per capita were associated with changes in mortality. Results: We find procyclical oscillations in mortality (i.e., higher mortality with higher GDP per capita) for total mortality, female population, populations of 0-9 and 45+ years, mortality due to cardiovascular diseases, malignant neoplasms, diabetes mellitus, respiratory infections and road traffic injuries. Homicides appear countercyclical, with higher levels at lower GDP per capita. Conclusions: Our results reveal large heterogeneity, but in our sample of cities, for specific population groups and causes of death, mortality oscillates procyclically, increasing when GDP per capita increases. In contrast we find few instances of countercyclical mortality.

Analysis of Latin American Fertility in Terms of Probable Social Classes

Theories of demographic change have not paid enough attention to how factors associated with fertility decline play different roles across social classes that are defined multidimensionally. I use a multidimensional definition of social class along with information on the reproductive histories of women born between 1920 and 1965 in six Latin American countries to show the following: the enduring connection between social stratification and fertility differentials, the concomitance of diverse fertility decline trajectories by class, and the role of within- and between-class social distances in promoting/preventing ideational change towards the acceptance of lower fertility. These results enable me to revisit the scope of theories of fertility change and to provide an explanatory narrative centred on empirically constructed social classes (probable social classes) and the macro- and micro-level conditions that influenced their life courses. I use 21 census samples collected between 1970 and 2005 in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Paraguay.

Fertility changes in Latin America in periods of economic uncertainty

We explored the relation between fertility and the business cycle in Latin America. First, we used aggregate data on fertility rates and economic performance for 18 countries. We then studied these same associations in the transitions to first, second, and third births with DHS individual data for ten countries. The results show that in general, childbearing declined during economic downturns. The decline was mainly associated with increasing unemployment rather than slowdowns in the growth of gross domestic product, although there was a positive relationship between first-birth rates and growth. While periods of unemployment may be a good time to have children because opportunity costs are lower, in fact childbearing was reduced or postponed, especially among the most recent cohorts and among urban and more educated women. The finding is consistent with the contention that, during this particular period in Latin America, income effects were dominant.

Economic recession and fertility in the developed world

This article reviews research on the effects of economic recessions on fertility in the developed world. We study how economic downturns, as measured by various indicators, especially by declining GDP levels, falling consumer confidence, and rising unemployment, were found to affect fertility. We also discuss particular mechanisms through which the recession may have influenced fertility behavior, including the effects of economic uncertainty, falling income, changes in the housing market, and rising enrollment in higher education, and also factors that influence fertility indirectly such as declining marriage rates. Most studies find that fertility tends to be pro-cyclical and often rises and declines with the ups and downs of the business cycle. Usually, these aggregate effects are relatively small (typically, a few percentage points) and of short durations; in addition they often influence especially the timing of childbearing and in most cases do not leave an imprint on cohort fertility levels. Therefore, major long-term fertility shifts often continue seemingly uninterrupted during the recession—including the fertility declines before and during the Great Depression of the 1930s and before and during the oil shock crises of the 1970s. Changes in the opportunity costs of childbearing and fertility behavior during economic downturn vary by sex, age, social status, and number of children; childless young adults are usually most affected. Furthermore, various policies and institutions may modify or even reverse the relationship between recessions and fertility. The first evidence pertaining to the recent recession falls in line with these findings. In most countries, the recession has brought a decline in the number of births and fertility rates, often marking a sharp halt to the previous decade of rising fertility rates.

Factors influencing union formation in Nairobi, Kenya

Using retrospective data from the Urban Integration Survey conducted in 2001 in Nairobi, Kenya, on a sample of 955 women and men aged 25-54, this paper compares factors influencing entry into union formation for men and women. The analysis uses event history methods, specifically Cox Proportional Hazards regression, stratified by age cohort and run separately by sex. The results indicate that delay in union formation is more pronounced for women than for men. Cohabitation without formal marriage is the prominent form of union, especially among the younger generation, and appears to have increased. For men, the timing of union is more dependent upon human capital acquisition than on cultural factors. These findings show that the marriage search model, which was first applied in Western countries, can also hold in cities of developing countries. Nonetheless, neither the search model nor the integration or the independence models apply to women's union formation, which very few exogenous factors can explain.

Marriage and Socioeconomic Change in Contemporary Indonesia

This study investigates the relationship between economic trends and entry into marriage in a rapidly developing setting. We examine Indonesian marriage in the 1990's, a decade of substantial economic growth followed by a sudden financial collapse in 1998. We use discrete-time hazard models to analyze information on 4,078 women and 4,496 men from the Indonesia Family Life Survey. While previous research has shown that marriages may be postponed after economic downturn, we find no evidence of such delays at the national level following the 1998 financial crisis. In contrast, we use regional wage rate data to show that entry into marriage is inversely related to economic growth throughout the decade for all women and for men from lower socioeconomic strata.

The Phoenix population: demographic crisis and rebound in Cambodia

The study of mortality crises provides an unusual and valuable perspective on the relationship between mortality and fertility changes, a relationship that has puzzled demographers for decades. In this article, we combine nationally representative survey and demographic-surveillance system data to study fertility trends around the time of the Khmer Rouge (KR) regime, under which 25% of the Cambodian population died. We present the first quantitative evidence to date that attests to a one-third decline of fertility during this regime, followed by a substantial "baby boom" after the fall of the KR. Further analyses reveal that the fertility rebound was produced not only by a two-year marriage bubble but also by a surge in marital fertility that remained for nearly a decade above its precrisis level. Our results illustrate the potential influence of mortality on fertility, which may be more difficult to identify for more gradual mortality declines. To the extent that until recently, Cambodian fertility appears to fit natural fertility patterns, our findings also reinforce recent qualifications about the meaning of this core paradigm of demographic analysis.

War, peace, and fertility in Angola

Using data from a nationally representative survey conducted in 1996, some two years after the end of a major outbreak of war, we examine the impact of war on the timing of recent births and war-related differences in reproductive preferences in Angola. We find evidence of a wartime drop and a postwar rebound in fertility, but these trends vary greatly, depending on the type and degree of exposure to war and on women's socioeconomic characteristics. At the same time, variations by parity are nonsignificant. In fertility preferences, the relative antinatalism of Angola's most modernized urban area stands out, but outside this area, differences between areas that were more and less affected by war are also noticeable. We offer interpretations of our findings and outline their implications for Angola's demographic future and demographic trends in similar settings.

[Economic crisis and infant mortality in Latin America since the 1980's]

In the present study, based on data from nine Latin American countries, we found evidence of an association between the economic crisis and infant mortality during the last decades. The paper initially review previous studies on this issue and shows the need for a greater research focus on shorter time intervals. We then describe the deterioration and unequal conditions among the countries based on trends in selected social and economic indicators and the evolution of infant mortality rates. According to our statistical analysis, infant mortality bore an inverse association to short-term economic variations. We also found a significant and negative correlation between decreasing infant mortality rates and increasing poverty. The economic crisis displayed effects of varying intensity among the countries we analyzed, with social inequality appearing as the most probable explanatory variable.

The impact of war, famine, and economic decline on marital fertility in ethiopia

We examine recent fertility trends in Ethiopia for evidence of short- and long-term responses to famine, political events, and economic decline. We use retrospective data on children ever born from the 1990 National Family and Fertility Survey to estimate trends in annual marital conception probabilities, controlling for women’s demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. The results of our analysis provide evidence of significant short-term declines in conception probabilities during years of famine and major political and economic upheaval. In the longer term, marital fertility in both urban and rural areas declined in the 1980s after increasing moderately in the 1970s.

The effects of infant mortality on fertility revisited: new evidence from latin america

In this paper, we examine empirical evidence for a relation between infant and child mortality and fertility in Latin American countries from 1920 to 1990. We investigate the relation at several levels of aggregation and evaluate the extent to which evidence at one level is consistent with evidence at other levels. Wefirst examine aggregate cross-country information over several decades, a type of data typically used in past research on the topic. We also examine yearly series of births, deaths, infant deaths, and socioeconomic indicators for selected countries to track the association between short-term fluctuations in fertility and infant mortality. Finally, we use micro-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to assess the relation between fertility and child mortality from individual reproductive histories. The evidence we assemble from these different data sets is remarkably consistent and suggests small positive effects of infant mortality onfertility. These effects, however, may be too small to support the hypothesis that changes in child mortality are of more than modest importance in the process offertility decline in Latin America in the late twentieth century.