The Determinants of Brazil's Recent Rapid Decline in Fertility (1983) / Chapter Skim
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From page 29... ...
The approach is therefore essential detective work, piecing together clues from a variety of sources in an attempt to draw a picture at the national level. Changes In marr iage patterns and age structure are always prime suspects in declining birth rates; therefore, the discussion begins by assessing changes in the distribution of women by marital status and in mean age at marriage, and then applies standardization techniques to check whether these changes and those in age structure played a major role in Brazil's fertility decline.
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From page 30... ...
According to Henriques (1980) , women in consensual unions account for an important share of Brazilian births, though Brazil has a lower proportion of such births than a number of other Latin American countries However, although Brazilian data include women in consensual unions as a subcategory of married women, there is strong evidence that a number of those who report themselves as single may in fact be in "=nsensual unions {Si}va, 1979:14)
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From page 31... ...
bThe total excludes women who did not report marital status. Sources: 1950-80 from population censuses' 1976 from PLED survey.
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From page 32... ...
Such underreporting would bias the age-specific marital fertility rate for these women upward if that proportion were used in the calculation of the rate; it would also add a further bias to the extent that consensual unions were recognized when a woman gave birth to a child.
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From page 33... ...
Including in the married category only those Musingly women who had births will lead to overstatement of marital fertility rates. One way to compensate for this is to assume that the proportion of single women sat risk.
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From page 34... ...
of women reported as single at different ages. In order to reduce the impact of underreporting of consensual unions, single women reporting a birth were considered mart fed .
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From page 35... ...
MARITAL FERTILITY How much did changes in the proportions married and age at marriage contribute to the acceleration of Brazil's fertility decline? Table 8 attempts to link total and age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs)
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From page 36... ...
. AS~FRs Age-specific easite1 fertility rates coo puted fro specla1 e~bolation of birthe in previous year for ever-aarried wooen, and and adjust d by P/P ratios for all wo.en tl.32 in 1970 and 1.22 in 1916)
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From page 37... ...
The largest absolute decline occurred at ages 25-29, with larger proportional declines among the older age categories. A first attempt was made to translate ASFRs into age-specific marital fertility rates by using data on
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From page 38... ...
Because of the underreporting of women in consensual unions, ASMFRs appear to be biased upward, particularly for women in their twenties. In 1970, for example, the ASMF~ for the 20-24 group would be .547; this would mean that the fertility of Brazilian women exceeded that of the Hutterites' one of the populations on whose experience standard natural fertility schedules are based.
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From page 39... ...
The main d~fference is that rates based on the tabulations are lower for women under 25 and higher for women over 30. Total marital fertility is slightly lower in 1970 and virtually the same in 1976 in the tabulated results O compar ison of the two sets of rates suggests that the decline in marital fertility probably was close to 24 percent over the 1970-76 period; however, there is a need to be cautious about both the level and age profile of marital fertility rates .
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From page 40... ...
40 100 80 60 x c, a AGE FIGURE 6 Age-Specific Marital Fertility Rates (ASMFR2 5-2 9 = 100) ~ Six Contexts: Brazil V>~ _ Natural Fertility ''it' \ · 40 20 25-29 ~34 35-39 ........
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From page 41... ...
However, considerable caution is required in interpreting results because of the poor reporting of marital status and possible overstatement of marital fertility rates discussed above. For the GFa, the decomposition is as shown in Table 9.
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From page 42... ...
Reproductive age women ( total) Reproductive age structure Marital status distribution Marital fertility Interaction 45.3 41.6 03.7 —O ~ 12 —~ o 17 -1.93 -0.49 +0.01 41.6 34.4 —7.
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From page 43... ...
method for decomposing the difference between natural fertility and observed total fertility rates into four proximate determinants. Bongearts' technique involves the computation of four indices: (1)
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From page 44... ...
Contraceptive Use The index of noncontraception requires information on the percent of fecund married women of reproductive age currently using contraception, as well as a breakdown of methods by type to measure contraceptive effectiveness (Bongaarts, 1980)
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From page 45... ...
4s no, U x i: ~ -_1 a: ·.
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From page 46... ...
, where ASH is a correction factor for sterility, ~E. is a measure of average contraceptive effectiveness based can the share of each method in the total, and BUS is the proportion of married women currently using a method.
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From page 47... ...
At best, these data are a rough guide to the extent of regional differentials, and serve as a basis for guesses at what the trends may have been. For illustrative purposes, they have been used to calculate national-level estimates of the index for three dates (1970, 1976, and 1980)
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From page 49... ...
For purposes of calculating Bongsarts' index of the effect of abortion on fertility, the ideal would be the total induced abortion rate; thin is analogous to the total fertility rate and indicates the number of abortions a woman would have during her reproductive lifetime if current rates prevailed. Either annual age-specif~c abortion rates or the total number of abortions for women who have completed their reproductive life cycle could be used to calculate such a rate.
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From page 50... ...
In other CPSs, the proportion of women reporting that they had ever had an abortion was higher in rural areas, but the proportion of preqnancies ending in abortion was higher in urban areas. CPS abortion data have been tabulated by women's age; this permitted a rough approximation of the total abortion rate, which was calculated as the proportion of the difference between the total pregnancy rate and the total fertility rate that could be attributed to induced abortion.
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From page 51... ...
In Salvador, Bahia, for example, assuming that one-third of reported abortions are induced and the total fer tility rate is about 4, the total induced abor tion rate would be about 0 2 per woman, for Bahia-RuraL, with a total fertility rate of 7, the total abortion rate is about the same. For Recife, calculation based on a total fer tility rate of 4 yields an abor tion rate of .
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From page 53... ...
53 be:]
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From page 54... ...
FOE illustrative purposes, a range for the total abortion rate of 0.5 to 1.5 per women may be assumed. With an estimated 1976 fatal fertility rate of 4.4, yielding about 3.75 million births in Brazil, a range estimate of between 500, 000 and 1, 2SO, 000 annual induced abortions is implied.
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From page 55... ...
very lin~ited. Indeed, Brazil falls at the very low end of the spectrum of <:ountries for which breastfeeding data are available, including Latin American countries, which have low rates compared to other regions of the world (Kent, 1981~.
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From page 56... ...
; the other assumes lower contraceptive TABLE 15 Estimates of Proximate Determinants of Total Fertility Rate, 1970-80: Braz il 1970 1976 1980 Measure and variant A B A B A B Assumptione Percent users (U) 0032 0.25 0.47 0.~l 0052 Oe`46 Effectiveness (E)
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From page 57... ...
Both variants assume that there is a decline in postpartum infecundity of about 0.5 months from 1970 to 1976 that relates to increased contraceptive use, with a similar decline for 1976 to 1980. No change is assumed between 1970 and 1976 in the index of nonmarriage, which is consistent with the observed trend for that period, while a small increase is shown for 19800 In variant ~A., the main factor accounting for the decline in the total fertility rate from its level of around 5.9 in 1970 to 4.4 in 1976 is the decrease in Cc; this reflects increased contraceptive use, as well as increased effectiveness deriving from a higher proportion of more effective methods (the pill and sterilization)
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From page 58... ...
Even after adjustment of the marital status data to account for possible undero reporting of the proportions married among women in their early twenties, there is little evidence of change between 1970 and 1976; this suggests that changes in marital status had only a limited effect on fertility decline during that interval. Because of the demographic echo of increased births in the l9SOs and 1960s, the age structure of the Brazilian population had a slightly positive impact on birth rates.
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From page 59... ...
This decline in marital fertility can in turn be traced to an increased use of effective contraception, combined with an indeterminate abortion component both within and outside of marriage. Though national-level data on the proximate variables are lacking, survey data can be used to construct a nat$onal-level index of noncontraception, which declined from .
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From page 60... ...
Indirect estimating techniques were used to derive total fertility rates for women in different education and income categories. Considerable caution is required in interpreting the results since most of the assumptions on which the techniques are based are violated in such an exercise.
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From page 61... ...
Computations of total fertility rates for women in different education groups are based on the adapted Brass methodology described in Indirect Techniques for Demo graphic Estimation tUnited Nations, 1983) ; in this method, r eference per Sod error in the reporting of bit ths during the year pr for to the census or survey is corrected using a f actor der iced f tom compar isons between repot ted par ity at different ages and the parity that would accrue if current fertility were cumulated (P/F ratios)
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From page 62... ...
Them problems, as well as the others mentioned above (interclass mobility, interclase differentials in recent fertility decline, and sampling error) , have undoubtedly affected the results reported in Table 16, which presents entitles of total fertility for women grouped according to educational attainment and rural-urban residence.
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From page 63... ...
In 1970, unadjusted total fertility for urban women with 1-4 years of school was 1.25 children lower than for women with no schooling, and 2.74 lower for women with 5 or more years of schooling. These differentials increased to 2.15 and
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From page 64... ...
A conclusion, tentative at best, is that urban fertility decline was probably more rapid among women with less education, leading to a narrowing of educational differentials among urban women; for rural women, those with no education experienced the least decline, leading to a widening in these differentials.
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From page 65... ...
'- 5 . G I _ ul tto 4 Y - n _ (151 5+ Years o 1970 65 1976 1 970 YEAR RURAL _ \ Some (253\ 1976 FIGURE t Total Fertility Rate by Years of Schooling, 1970 and 1916: Brazz1 Note: Percent decreases shown in parentheses.
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From page 66... ...
Insights into the relationship between education and fertility that can be extracted from tabulations of questions on children ever born and children born in the last year are not limited to computation of total fertility ratese Tabulations of f irst bir~che from these data mate it possible to measure educational differences in the singulate mean age at first birth using the tech. nique described earlier.
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From page 67... ...
Before this question is explored in detail in subsequent chapters, the remainder of the present chapter describes more precisely TABLE 17 Total Fertility Rates by Family Income Level (multiples of monthly minimum salary) , 1970 and 1976: Brazil Monthly Income: Multiples of the Minimum Salary Total Fertility Rate Percent 1970 1976 Decline <1 1.66 6.11 20.2 <1 to <2 6.20 5.94 4.2 <2 to <5 4.35 4.07 6.4 >5 2.60- 2~54 2.3 Source: Berquo (1980)
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From page 68... ...
, a figure that is closer to the national average. Another ambiguity relates to the extent to which these changes in composition, as well as interclass differentials in prior fertility decline and sailing error, may have distorted P/F ratios used to adjust total fertility rates reported in Table 17.
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From page 69... ...
Interclase mobility is reduced but not eliminated by this grouping since The defiles refer to the distribution of all families, and the composition of groups could change as a result of changes in the distribution of women by place of residence or income. Total fertility rates calculated from responses to fertility questions tabulated for groups of family income deciles are presented in Table 18.
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From page 70... ...
The unadjusted rates suggest that fertility decline was greater am~ng the middle- and highoincome groupa. The picture changes considerably when rates are adjusted using the observed P/F ratios: incame differentials narrow for both urban and rural women because of the high P/F ratios of high-income women.
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From page 71... ...
The pattern of fertility decline by income class also changes, with the adjusted rates indicating that decline to have been greatest among lowincome urban women and least among low-income rural women. Though the P/F ratio of high-income women is probably distorted, there is little change in it from 1970 to 1976; thus the percentage decline for the group is unaffected.
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From page 72... ...
; the picture is less clear in the distribution of women by income level within education categor ies ( reading down COlUmnS) e There is a closer correspondence in rural areas and at higher levels of income and education in the urban population: for example, the majority of women with higher educational attainment are found in higherincome defiles.
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From page 73... ...
Family income groups were also con~olidated to reduce sampling error: in urban areas, the lowest six and highest four deciles were combined, and all rural women were combined. The discussion is limited to unadjusted total fertility rates.
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From page 74... ...
Declines were least rapid in Rio and Sao Paula since their rates were lower to begin with in 1970. The greatest percentage decline occurred awns high-income urban women in the Nor~cheast, while the lowest percentage decline was mung rural women in that region.
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From page 75... ...
of women -- the higher-income deciles in Rio and Sao Parlor had an 1B.6 percent fertility decline. Although this was below the national average since this group already had comparatively low fertility in 1970, it was important because of the weight of this group in the total.
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From page 76... ...
Rural fertility decline in this region was about 22 percent, and these rural women accounted for about 14 percent of the total. This contrasts with rural women in the Northeast, whose decline was only 5 percent, and who accounted for a roughly similar percentage share of all women.
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From page 77... ...
CONCLUSIONS The objective of this chapter was to identify differences in fertility among Brazilian women according to levels of educational attainment and family income in 1970 and 1976, as well as differential rates of fertility decline between these two sets of data by education and income. A further objective was to determine the possible effects of changes in the distribution of women by education and income on the overall rate of decline and to pinpoint which groups contributed most to the decline because they had greater percentage decline-, greater weight in the total number of women aged 15-19, or both.
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From page 78... ...
Though it would be desirable to use data on current rather than cumulative fertility in analyzing recent changes, the questionable reliability of current fertility measures as applied to subpopulations suggests that data on parity by age and other characteristics are more likely to yield unbiased results O Imaginative use of these data ~ such as a focus on childIessne"s and on cohort changes ([OK example, the difference between the average parity of women in a particular education/income class who were 20024 in 1970 and the parity of the same group at age 26~30 in 1976) may be a way to compensate for some of the information on recent fertility that is lost by not using the data on births in the last year.
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From page 79... ...
In this period, Brazil also made major str ides in achieving increased educational attainment for women (and men) ; moreover , important changes in social structure were occurs ing, including very rapid urbanization, increased female labor force participation, and 79
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From page 80... ...
Finally, because of the essential institutional differences between urban and rural women, the hypotheses and data linking socioeconomic factors to fertility decline are applied separately to these two groups. H~E:SES LINKING SOCIOECONOMIC CONDITIONS TO E ERTILITY DECLINE A number of hypotheses about the effects of changing socioeconomic conditions on Brazil fertility decline can be formulated.
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From page 81... ...
Female educational attainment and labor force participation are good examples. Education is strongly associated with fertility differentials, and is used in economic models as a measure of the value of time.
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From page 82... ...
The fact that fertility declines in the early 1970s were concentrated among the absolute poor and the lowermiddle income families has suggested alternative hypotheses about the link between deterioration in buying power and reproductive behavior. Berquo (1980)
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From page 83... ...
The possibility that physiological and psychological factors were involved in the fertility decline among Brazil's low-income groups should therefore not be ignored; however, it appears unlikely that they would account for a significant share of that decline . Another hypothesis draws on elements of the modernization f ramewor k outlined above, but stresses increased economic pressures on the buying power of low- income households as a key determinant of changes in reproductive behavior.
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From page 84... ...
Increased Access to Fertility Control While Brazil is one of the few developing countries without a national policy in support of fertility control, Brazilian women are not necessarily denied access to fertility control. In fact, the private sector has played a major role in increasing the availability of contraceptives in Brazil, both through commercial channels
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From page 85... ...
. Commercial distr ibution networks were an important factor in the fertility decline among Brazilian middleand upper-income classes prior to 1970, with pills, condoms, and surgical sterilization being the most common means adopted.
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From page 86... ...
1965-81: Brazil / ~ Rio de Janeiro J iSouthern Region r Sao Paulo Mines G - ais _ _ Northe - . North, ContraIWost R - ions ,1 , 1 ,, , 1980 ment has not yet adopted a national health plan that would eventually include family planning among its services, the health care system appears to have adopted a more 1 iberal approach than it had before, at least in allowing private physicians working within the system to prescribe oral contraceptives and perform sterilizations.
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From page 87... ...
When educational attainment i" substituted for income as the measure of socioeconomic differences in contraceptive use, the results are virtually identical, at least for the four states with available tabulations on which to base a comparison. Table 23 shows the percentage of currently married women aged 1S-44 using contraception for four education categories, ranging from none to some
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From page 88... ...
~ 27 0 8 Sterilization 5.4 11.0 150 2 220 0 16 c 1 Other 3506 27.5 1802 2405 2000 Not Using 53.6 42.6 32 0 6 31. S 36 o 1 Total 100.0 100.0 lOOo O 100- 0 100 - 0 Rio Grande do Norte (1980)
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From page 89... ...
The CPS data presented in Table 22 support the view that access to family planning has spread to women of lower socioeconomic classes in the industrialized Southeast and to a lesser extent in the Northeast. Differences in contraceptive use in the Northeast appear to be related, at least in part, to whether organized family planning programs were operative.
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From page 90... ...
In Rio Grande do Norte, Pern~mbuco, and Paraiba, where CBPs had been operative, the BEMFAM-State/Municipal Hospital system provided around 60 percent of services. Table 24 also shows a similar, though less differentiated, pattern for surgical sterilization: again the contribution of private hospitals and clinics is highest in Sao Paulo and Bahia, whereas public-sector sources play a greater role in Rio Grande do Norte, Paraiba, and Pernambuco.
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From page 91... ...
91 fir 1 us a a)
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From page 92... ...
The relevant income variable is household income without these women's contributions. At this point, the discu"sion focuses on changes in educational attainment and their relationship to differences in labor force participatione fable 25 suggests that increases in female educational attainment were greater in the 1970s than in the 1960s.
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From page 93... ...
For each five-year age group, the percentage of women in each of four educational attainment categories (none, 1-4, 5-9, and 10+ years of schooling) is shown.
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From page 94... ...
Rates are shown for all women and for currently married women. In comparing data on labor force participation from the census and survey, it :s important to recognize that the two sources def ine participation differently in ache census, a person was considered active if market work was his or her principal activity during the year prior to the interviews in the survey, a person who worked during the week prior to the interview was considered active.
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From page 95... ...
These increases in labor force par ticipation among less-educated women, par titular ly those over age 30, show up even more strongly in rates for currently married women, as shown in the second panel of Table 27. In 1970, only 7-8 percent of mar r fed women over age 30 in the anode ~ education group were working; in 1976, this proportion increased to over 20 percent.
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From page 96... ...
Based on separate samples for urban and rural women extracted from these files, the next two subsections present a more detailed examination of the characteristics of currently married urban and rural women, and how these characteristics relate to dif ferentials in average par ity . The focus in both subsections is restricted to currently mart fed women because the analysis of proximate determinants of fertility presented in Chapter 1 identified declining marital fertility as the main component of the recent decline in Brazilian birth rates.
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From page 97... ...
While most cells TABLE 28 Mean and Standard Error (s) a of Number of Children Ever Born, Currently Married Urban Women, by Age and Educational Attainment, 1970 and 1976: Brazil Education None 1-4 5~9 Age 10+ Group Mean ($)
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From page 98... ...
The generalizations in the previous section about increases in educational attainment and labor force participation hold for currently married urban women O From 1970 to 1976, the proportion of urban women reporting no education declined from 24.2 percent to 16.0 percent, while that of women with 10+ years of schooling increased from 8.3 to 140 0 percent. Patterns of ~ abor force participation by level of educational attainment are similar to those shown in Table 27, though the differences between education categories are less.
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From page 99... ...
To assess the possible impact of migration, women were classified by migration status, with those who had resided in their municipality of current residence for less than 6 years being considered migrants. The second panel of Table 29 shows the percentage of currently married urban women who qualified as migrants according to this definition for each of the age and education categories previously identified.
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From page 100... ...
Table 30 presents the percentage distributions of currently married urban women according to these status categor ies and their educational attainment O The status distributions also include the proportion of women not working (columns sum to 100 percent) , indicating which status categor ies absorbed employment increases in each educational group between 1970 and 1976.
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From page 101... ...
These data suggest that if improvements in women ' s status occurred through employment, they did so because of increased participation among women in higher educational attainment categories rather than the opening of higher-status jobs to women with lower educational attainment. The fact that increased employment among women with lower or no education consisted mainly of low-status jobs suggests that increased employment for these groups may indicate not so much a return on investment in education, but a desire to maintain or increase household income.
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From page 102... ...
Table 31 shows the percentage of currently married urban women residing in households with a television, again broken down by age and educational attainment. Although increases are observed among all of the education groups, the larger proportional increases are concentrated in the two lower groups.
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From page 103... ...
presents averages of the number of children ever born for working and nonworking currently married women by their age and educational attainment. In 1970, the average number of children was generally lower for working women.
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From page 104... ...
Differences in average parity by migration status, again controlling for age and educational attainment, are shown in Table 33. Age and education influence the direction of differences by migrant status.
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From page 105... ...
The data on links between selected measures of the socioeconomic status of currently married urban women and differentials in their average parity raise several issues for further analysis. After controlling for age, the greatest differentials in average parity are those associated with educational attainment, with significantly lower levels of average parity being observed among women with higher levels of education.
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From page 106... ...
These hypotheses will be discussed further in Chapter 4. The remainder of the present chapter explores differences in the average parity of currently married rural women in Brazil, using cross-tabulations that control for age and other socioeconomic variables.
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From page 107... ...
To what extent does variation in other socioeconomic characteristics of rural women relate to differences in average par ity? Table 3 5 presents the percentages of currently married rural women according to three characteristics; two of these (work status and migration status)
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From page 108... ...
108 TABLE 34 Mean Number of Children Ever Born for Currently Marr led, Rural Women by Reg ion, Educational Attainment, and Age, 1970 and 1916: Brazil Education Northeast RJ-SP Age Group Ott er None Some None Some None Some 1970 20-24 2.48 2.28 2.18 10 84 2.36 1.85 (.06)
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From page 109... ...
Migrant status and work status were defined as they were for urban women: women who had resided in their present municipality for 5 years or less were considered migrants, and work status was established according to the census and survey data. The earlier caution about differences in the way these sources define labor force participation is particularly important here, since a higher proportion of rural than urban women fall into the grey area defined by the census as not working and by Me survey as working.
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From page 110... ...
Regional differentials in socioeconomic characteristics are greatest in the proportion of women in proletar fan households. In 1970, the shift to wage labor among household heads had progressed furthest in Rio and Sao Paulo,.
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From page 111... ...
It suggests that the effect of proletar ionization on fertility may operate through a complex of other var tables whose ef fects are manifested in such regional differences, or that proletarianization itself may be a manifestation of changes in another variable or set of variables.
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From page 112... ...
The table suggests that average parity was slightly lower for working women in the Northeast and "other" regions in 1970, but not in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paula; there were so few working women in the latter two states in 1970 that none of the averages for that group were signif icantly different from those of nonworking women. In 1976, the pattern of differences between working and nonworking women was even less clear: there were still no differences ire RJ-SP, while working TABLE 37 Mean Number of Children Ever Born for Currently Married, Rural Women Aged 20-44, by Region and Work Status, 1970 and 1976: Brazil Region Northeast RJ-SP Working Other Age Group No Yes No Yes No Yes , .
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From page 113... ...
Another potential covariate is migration; however, tabulations of average parity by migration status revealed no significant differences, and the results are not presented here. This leads us back to education, which was the only socioeconomic characteristic of rural women for which a consistent and statistically significant pattern of differences in average parity was observed.
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From page 114... ...
The proportion of women reporting no education was reduced, and there were significant increases in the proportion reporting higher level s of educational attainment in both urban and rural areas. Increased proportions of married women were also reported as working, though it is difficult to determine to what extent this reflects differences in the way census and survey data defined labor force participation.
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From page 115... ...
Second, analysis of the proximate determinants of the decline in the total fertility rate between 1970 and 1976 indicated fertility control by married women to be the major factor involved; this conclusion was also supported by evidence on the diffusion of contraception among new regions and income groups. Third, accelerated fertility decline coincided with a number of important socioeconomic changes that could have had an impact on the motivation to control fertility, including increases in female educational attainment and possible aggravation of inflationary pressures on the economic resources of lowand middle-income households.
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From page 116... ...
URBAN WOMEN As noted earlier, the acceleration of fertility decline in Brazil coincided with a period during which lower- and middle-income urban households were raising their consumption expectations end beginning to realize them through increased purchases of housing and other consumer dur ables, including televisions and automobiles, with most purchases made on the installment plan O Unequal treatment of wages and credit obligations in Brazil's indexing system made it more difficult for families to keep up with payments, and even to purchase basic necessities during periods of high inflation. As was suggested earlier, this, combined with increased knowledge of and access to contraception, may have reduced family-size desires.
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From page 117... ...
A new variable that attempts to measure households' relative economic positions has also been added. Table 38 lists the variables that have been selected for the analysis of data on urban women.
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From page 118... ...
However, the question was raised of whether parity changes between 1970 and 1976 mainly reflected changes in the educational and income levels of married women of reproductive age, or whether other variables related to inflation and income distribution also contributed to fertility decline. The available census and survey data files provide only a few threads of evidence on the latter.
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From page 119... ...
The problem was in identifying the endogenous effects of the employment and earnings of women in reproductive ages on their fertility, vis-a-vis the exogenous influence of those women's education and their husbands ' earnings. The data f iles did not provide other exogenous variables that could be used to estimate fully identified parameters for female employment and earnings.
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From page 120... ...
It was impossible to specify a statistically meaningful causal relation between fertility and mortality in such circumstances. Unweighted means and standard deviations of the var$ables used in the regression analysis of differences in average parity are presented in Table 39.
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From page 121... ...
i21 mABLE 39 Meansa (standard deviations) of Variables Used in Analysis of Differences in Average Parity for Urban Women, 1970 and 1976: Brazil Age Year and Variable - 20-24 25-34 35-44 1970 CEB 1.78 3.47 5.00 (1.51)
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From page 122... ...
A check of outliers in the earnings equations indicated that these high zero order correlations were a statistical artifact produced by cases at extremes calf the income distr ibution: overestimation of earnings when husbands repot ted zero earnings and underestimate ion when they repot ted very high earnings. These correlations disappeared when extreme cases were omitted; however, it was decided not to exclude such cases from the analysis cuff fertility differentials because the impact of the differential between ZINC and PINC was of interest over the entire range of the income distr ibution.
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From page 123... ...
suggests that the responsiveness of BAR to changes in MED and HINC among urban Brazilian women was at an intermediate level, and that it moved in the direction of higher-income countries from 1970 to 1976. Schultz found that elasticities of average par ity with respect to both mother's education and father' s earnings became increasingly negative as the level of development increased.
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From page 126... ...
In a society like Brazil in which income differentials are associated with a variety of sociocultural factors that could influence reproductive behavior, it makes sense to look for the effect of income on fertility within rather than between specific reference groups. Similar considerations raise the question of whether an interaction with sociocultural factors associated with differences in educational attainment affects the regression results for ME:D and HINC.
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From page 127... ...
The extent of this concern will depend on one's confidence in the conclusions derived earlier from census and survey data: that average ages at marriage and first birth did not change substantially between 1970 and 1976, and that most of the decline in total fertility can be attributed to a decline in marital fertility rather than to changes in the proportions married. The issue is less important to determining how much changes in socioeconomic status contributed to declines in AIR than to examining how those changes were translated into declines via the proximate determinants of fertility.
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From page 128... ...
The third variant is useful mainly in illustrating how the combined effects of changes in composition and in coefficients relate to changes when coefficients are held constant. For example, the effect of changes in the HINC coefficient and the average level of HINC would have contributed to an increase of .562 in CEB among women aged
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From page 129... ...
129 TABLE 42 Changes in Contribution of Independent Variables to Levels of CEB, 1970 and 1976: Brazil Age Group 1970 Regression 1976 Regression Co~ined and Variable Coefficients Coefficients Coefficients 20-24 CONSTANT O O O .
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From page 130... ...
For women aged 35-44, there is a s ignif icant increase in the constant term and a decline in the impact of education. When the regression results for the merged f lies are used to decompose change, the results are consistent with
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From page 131... ...
This, plus changes in the constant TABLE 44 Decomposition of Changes in Average Parity from 1970 to 1976 Using Regression Coeff icient for Merged Data: Brazil Age Group Variable 20-24 25-34 35-44 MED -O.
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From page 132... ...
does not appear to account for much of the change in CEB between 1970 and 1976. Thus our assessment of the components of changes in r~n from 1970 to 1976 indicates that increases in the educational attainment of married women in Brazil and increases in their husbands ' earnings contributed significantly to the decline of average CEB.
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From page 133... ...
RURAL WOMEN Prior to 1970, fertility rates among rural Brazilian women were constant or rising at the national level. Regional declines in the South and Southeast were offset by constant or increasing rates in the Northeast and Frontier areas.
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From page 134... ...
This lack of opportunity in rural areas, combined with hopes of paid employment and urban amenities, has motivated Brazil ' s rural-urban migrations While migration was the primary demographic response to adverse socioeconomic conditions among the masses of Brazil's rural population, other d~rahic processes were affected, including fertility and family formation. Chapter 3 suggested several hypotheses about how such changes might be affecting rural fertility in Brazil.
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From page 135... ...
One of these relates to an institutional factor mediating the response to increasing economic pressures, such as scarcity of land and consolidation of land in larger holdings, on Me demographic responses of farm families. This factor is rural proletarianiiation, or the shift from an owner~operator and farm family labor mode of production to wage labor.
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From page 136... ...
Also, rural women with no education as a percent of all women aged 15-49 declined from about 21 percent to about 13 percent, a result of some comb~nation of increases in ectuca~zona~ acca~rmer~c arcane Lucas women, out-migration, and possible underrepresentation of less-educated rural women in the PNAD survey. Such evidence suggests that the role of education should not be neglected in examining rural fertility differences.
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From page 137... ...
Average CEB declined by 12 percent for married women aged 20-24, 6 percent for TABLE 46 Variable Labels and Definitions, Rural Women: Brazil van table Def inition C~R AGE MED HEI) NE PROL Average par itys namer of live children ever born as reported in 1970 census and 1976 CHAD survey.
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From page 138... ...
138 TABLE 47 Meansa (standard deviations) of Variables Used in Analysis of Differences in Average Parity for Rural Women, 1910 and 1976: Brazil Age Group Year and Variable 20-24 25-34 35-44 1970 1976 CEB 2.21 4.42 6.79 (1070)
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From page 139... ...
06 -.07 -. 08 Compared to the results for urban women, the responsiveness of CEB to increases in MED is one-third to one-half as great for rural women, and the increase in responsiveness from 1970 to 1976 is smaller.
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From page 141... ...
141 CD ~: s~ o s~ ~ — c~ cn a: x: o.
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From page 142... ...
Changes in Rural CEB from 1970 to 1976 The change in average CEO from 1970 to 1976 that can be accounted for in the regression analysis results from increased educational attainment. In this connection, it should be recognized that mos t of the observed change is not explained by changes in the var.
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From page 143... ...
Data limitations curtailed even further the analyst s of differences and the decomposition of changes in the average parity of rural women. The main finding for these women was that increased educational attainment contributed most to the explanation of variance, though only a limited portion of the total variance was explained by the regressions.
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From page 144... ...
Information on child labor was included In agricultural censuses, but not In the demographic censuses and surreys. If Brazil is ever to conduct a fertility survey patterned after the World Fertility Survey, it would focus ideally on these elements of rural socioeconomic structure, as well as those aspects of change in urban areas that are not covered by currently avail able census and survey data.
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Key Terms
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