Mortality risks, sequential decisions on births, and population growth

Bibliographic Data

ID10969609
AuthorsDonald J O’Hara (University of Rochester, corresponding author)
Year1972
Volume9
Issue3
Pages485-498
Publication date1972-08-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDemography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0070-3370 • E-ISSN: 1533-7790
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2307/2060868
PMID4670337
OpenAlexW2125994541
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited5

The population growth rates implied by parental attempts to be highly certain of having a surviving son for old-age support are investigated. At life expectancies of 40 to 65 years, family-planning “strategies” using contraception are found to imply markedly lower growth rates (1.01.5 percent vs. 2.5 percent) than are both commonly observed and also previously derived by Heer and Smith. In contrast to strategies relying only on sterilization, contraceptive spacing of births permits parents to buy time and information. In particular, they can postpone deciding whether to have another child until they see if their infant son will survive the earliest years of childhood. These results suggest that many less developed countries might achieve a substantial reduction in birth rates, provided that family-planning programs emphasized contraception as well as sterilization and effectively communicated the idea of spacing births. Factors bearing on the range of applicability of the old-age-security hypothesis, and any results and policies derived from it, are also briefly analyzed

Birth rate · Developed country · Developing country · Economic growth · Economics · Family planning · Fertility · Population · Population growth · Research methodology · Sociology · Sterilization (economics · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences · Demography · Global Health Care Issues · Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management · Medicine

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