Fertility,development, and family planning

Earlier studies by Tsui and Bogue (1978) and Mauldin and Berelson (1978) suggested that family planning efforts account for 3-4 times the variance in fertility than is explained by indicators of socioeconomic development. This paper replicates, extends, and revises these analyses. Selection of a different set of countries for sampling was found to have little effect on the earlier results. In addition, neither factor scaling nor the addition of distributional variables had a substantial effect. However, weighting countries by population size was found to produce a decline in explained variance. It was found that although family planning has a stronger direct effect on fertility than any other variable when countries are considered, the effect of education is stronger when people are considered. When more developed countries were included in the analysis, the combination of prior fertility and mortality explained almost all the variation in current fertility. This finding suggests that fertility is more responsive to longterm, stabilized changes in mortality than to short-term changes. 4 methodological conclusions are derived from these analyses: 1) unless a sample of countries is overtly biased, the selection of a sample on the basis of available data has little impact on the results; 2) stepwise methods can be utilized to avoid the inclusion of a large number of variables in a regression equation; 3) weighting of cases has a substantial impact on results; and 4) since most variables have little direct influence on fertility change, analysis should be extended to examine indirect influences. These results suggest a policy which invests economic resources in education and mortality reduction as well as family planning efforts. Investments in primary and secondary education may reduce mortality as well as fertility.     

Policy guidelines for collective bargaining and family planning

The benfits of establishing family planning through collective bargaining to both labor and management are discussed. Until workers can be convinced that their children will receive health care, education and employment, and that they will be economically secure in old age, it is difficult to convince them of the many benefits of child spacing and small family size. In 1953, it was calculated by management in a Japanese steel factory that about 70% of all acidents could be attributable to difficulties in the private lives of employees. In order to ease problems in the home, collective agreements were initiated by management in the Nippon Express Company to provide family planning services. Labor agreed as long as the workers were to share in the economic awards which came from participation. Costs of implementing the family planning programs were fully offset by the decrease in expenditure on family allowances, confinement, nursing, and so on. In India some ten estates began a program in which a certain amount of money is paid into an account for every month that a woman does not become pregnant. If the woman becomes pregnant, she forfeits a substantial amount of the fund. This money comes directly from the funds which would normally have to be set aside to provide for maternity and child support programs. Certain guidelines are presented in the paper to outline the areas of responsibility of labor and management in the provision of family planning services. Among the many possibilities mentioned is the idea that both labor and management could look into the conceivability of plowing back a portion of whatever savings are accrued by management into a pension scheme to compensate workers for the loss of labor caused by having fewer children than were previously anticipated.     

The politics of inflation-fighting in new democracies

Several scholars have advocated social pacts as a means to combat inflation in new democracies. This article examines efforts to negotiate social pacts in five nascent democratic regimes during their first five years in existence. Boolean analysis demonstrates the improbable nature of the social pacts negotiated in Spain; subsequent analysis aims at improving our understanding of why Spain successed. While social pacts have been minimally useful in most new democracies, inflation has been combatted more successfully in many countries (including some of the cases analyzed here) via the move from state capitalism toward more free-market policies. While market economics has been more successful in fighting inflation, the political effects of such policies have been mixed.