Consequences of imperfect fertility control for children"s survival, health, and schooling

Two aspects of imperfect fertility control are explored: unintended fertility (the birth of children who were either unwanted at the time of conception or whose conception was mistimed); and excess fertility (the birth of children in excess of the mother"s family size ideal). Section 2 introduces general concepts and reviews the modest empirical literature on the consequences of unwanted or excess fertility. In the next two sections, the specific concepts of unintended and excess fertility are brought to the forefront, and effort is made to isolate both their distinct features and their common elements. Section 3 develops a simple economic model of decisionmaking about fertility and child investment and embeds that model in the larger context of the demographic transition. Section 4 describes the special advantages of DHS data for this analysis as well as its inherent limitations. In Section 5, the determinants of unintended childbearing and excess fertility are investigated. Section 6 presents detailed empirical findings on consequences, as expressed in the dimensions of mortality, child anthropometry, and education. Three levels of effects are considered: the consequences for the unintended child, for the older siblings of such a child, and for all children in a family whose size exceeds the mother"s expressed ideal. Technical appendices discuss the linkage of DHS data files, aspects of selectivity in child-based samples, the criteria guiding the choice of service availability measures, and the characteristics of the educational systems in the five study countries. Results reveal a striking pattern. The highest levels of unwanted and excess fertility, as well as of fertility in general and of child mortality, are found in the comparatively poor countries of Egypt and Kenya. But, apart from the birth-interval effects, the family-level consequences of unwanted or excess fertility are most clearly apparent only in the comparatively better-off societies of the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, and Thailand. The causes of this pattern, together with areas for further research, are explored in conclusion. Includes references.