IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rpstxx/v75y2021i2p289-303.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

When is fertility too low or too high? Population policy preferences of demographers around the world

Author

Listed:
  • Hendrik P. van Dalen
  • Kène Henkens

Abstract

When does fertility in a country become so low or so high that a government needs to intervene? This paper sheds light on this population policy question, based on a worldwide survey among demographers. We examine how professionals’ policy preferences regarding fertility levels are affected by their views on the impacts of population growth/decline and by fertility in their country of residence. The median respondent suggests intervention once fertility goes below 1.4 children or above 3.0. Three results stand out: first, demographers who are concerned about the carrying capacity of the earth are more willing to intervene than those who are less concerned. Second, the context of decision-making matters: experts living in high-fertility countries are more set on intervention than those living in low-fertility countries, but their threshold fertility level is also higher. Third, political orientation matters: right-leaning demographers are more set on government intervention than left-leaning demographers.

Suggested Citation

  • Hendrik P. van Dalen & Kène Henkens, 2021. "When is fertility too low or too high? Population policy preferences of demographers around the world," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 75(2), pages 289-303, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rpstxx:v:75:y:2021:i:2:p:289-303
    DOI: 10.1080/00324728.2020.1784986
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00324728.2020.1784986
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00324728.2020.1784986?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. van Dalen, H.P. & Micevska Scharf, M., 2011. "Reproductive Health Aid : A Delicate Balancing Act," Discussion Paper 2011-027, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    2. Lee, R., 2016. "Macroeconomics, Aging, and Growth," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 59-118, Elsevier.
    3. S. Philip Morgan, 2003. "Is low fertility a twenty-first-century demographic crisis?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 40(4), pages 589-603, November.
    4. Tiloka de Silva & Silvana Tenreyro, 2017. "Population Control Policies and Fertility Convergence," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(4), pages 205-228, Fall.
    5. Hendrik P. van Dalen, 2019. "Values of Economists Matter in the Art and Science of Economics," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(3), pages 472-499, August.
    6. Francesco C. Billari, 2005. "Europe and its Fertility: From Low to Lowest Low," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 194(1), pages 56-73, October.
    7. Maria Rita Testa & Vegard Skirbekk & Wolfgang Lutz, 2006. "The Low Fertility Trap Hypothesis. Forces that May Lead to Further Postponement and Fewer Births in Europe," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 4(1), pages 167-192.
    8. Martha J. Bailey, 2013. "Fifty Years of Family Planning: New Evidence on the Long-Run Effects of Increasing Access to Contraception," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 44(1 (Spring), pages 341-409.
    9. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    10. de Silva, Tiloka & Tenreyroa, Silvana, 2017. "Population control policies and fertility convergence," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86158, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801, January.
    12. Michael S. Teitelbaum, 2015. "Political demography: Powerful trends under-attended by demographic science," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 69(sup1), pages 87-95, April.
    13. Thomas Anderson & Hans-Peter Kohler, 2015. "Low Fertility, Socioeconomic Development, and Gender Equity," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 41(3), pages 381-407, September.
    14. Peter McDonald, 2013. "Societal foundations for explaining fertility: Gender equity," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 28(34), pages 981-994.
    15. Hendrik P. van Dalen & Kène Henkens, 2011. "Who fears and who welcomes population decline?," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 25(13), pages 437-464.
    16. Erich Striessnig & Wolfgang Lutz, 2013. "Can below-replacement fertility be desirable?," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 40(3), pages 409-425, August.
    17. Hendrik P. van Dalen & Kène Henkens, 2011. "Who fears and who welcomes population decline?," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 25(13), pages 437-464.
    18. Amos Tversky & Itamar Simonson, 1993. "Context-Dependent Preferences," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(10), pages 1179-1189, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hendrik P. Dalen & Kène Henkens, 2021. "Population and Climate Change: Consensus and Dissensus among Demographers," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 37(3), pages 551-567, July.
    2. Nick Parr, 2023. "An Alternative Perspective on the Changing Relationships between Fertility and Replacement Level in European Countries," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 49(2), pages 255-278, June.
    3. Hendrik P. Dalen & Kène Henkens, 2021. "Population and Climate Change: Consensus and Dissensus among Demographers," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 37(3), pages 551-567, July.
    4. Million Phiri & Liness Shasha & Emmanuel Musonda & Mikidadi Muhanga & Musonda Lemba, 2023. "Choice of desired family size among young women in Zambia: what matters?," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 1-18, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hendrik P. van Dalen & Kène Henkens, 2021. "When is fertility too low or too high? Population policy preferences of demographers around the world," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 75(2), pages 289-303, May.
    2. Liu Qiang & Fernando Rios-Avila & Han Jiqin, 2020. "Is China's Low Fertility Rate Caused by the Population Control Policy?," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_943, Levy Economics Institute.
    3. Goldstone, Jack A. (Голдстоун, Джек) & Korotaev, Andrey (Коротаев, Андрей) & Zinkina, Yulia (Зинькина, Юлия), 2015. "Political Demography of the World Economy: Tropical Africa [Политическая Демография Мировой Экономики: Страны Тропической Африки]," Published Papers mn45, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
    4. Doepke, Matthias & Hannusch, Anne & Kindermann, Fabian & Tertilt, Michèle, 2022. "The Economics of Fertility: A New Era," IZA Discussion Papers 15224, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. O'Sullivan, Jane N., 2020. "The social and environmental influences of population growth rate and demographic pressure deserve greater attention in ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    6. Julie Fry, 2014. "Migration and Macroeconomic Performance in New Zealand: Theory and Evidence," Treasury Working Paper Series 14/10, New Zealand Treasury.
    7. Federico H. Gutierrez, 2022. "The inter-generational fertility effect of an abortion ban," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(1), pages 307-348, January.
    8. Nick Parr, 2023. "An Alternative Perspective on the Changing Relationships between Fertility and Replacement Level in European Countries," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 49(2), pages 255-278, June.
    9. Xiaohui Liu & Zhihao Zhou & Jing Zhang, 2023. "Longevity, Fertility, and the Real Exchange Rate," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 31(2), pages 26-57, March.
    10. Jolene Tan, 2023. "Perceptions towards pronatalist policies in Singapore," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 1-27, September.
    11. Kashnitsky, Ilya & de Beer, Joop & van Wissen, Leo, 2017. "Decomposition of regional convergence in population aging across Europe," OSF Preprints ykqbv, Center for Open Science.
    12. Iñigo Calvo-Sotomayor & Ekhi Atutxa & Ricardo Aguado, 2020. "Who Is Afraid of Population Aging? Myths, Challenges and an Open Question from the Civil Economy Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(15), pages 1-17, July.
    13. Seongsoo Choi, 2018. "Fewer mothers with more colleges? The impacts of expansion in higher education on first marriage and first childbirth," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 39(20), pages 593-634.
    14. Frank Götmark & Malte Andersson, 2023. "Achieving sustainable population: Fertility decline in many developing countries follows modern contraception, not economic growth," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(3), pages 1606-1617, June.
    15. Philip Rees & Nicole Gaag & Joop Beer & Frank Heins, 2012. "European Regional Populations: Current Trends, Future Pathways, and Policy Options [Population des Régions Européennes: Tendances Actuelles, Développements Futurs et Options Politiques]," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 28(4), pages 385-416, November.
    16. Bárány, Zsófia L. & Coeurdacier, Nicolas & Guibaud, Stéphane, 2023. "Capital flows in an aging world," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    17. Norma Schemschat, 2021. "Refugee Arrival under Conditions of Urban Decline: From Territorial Stigma and Othering to Collective Place-Making in Diverse Shrinking Cities?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-17, December.
    18. Yi Chen & Yingfei Huang, 2020. "The power of the government: China's Family Planning Leading Group and the fertility decline of the 1970s," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 42(35), pages 985-1038.
    19. Swastika Chakravorty & Srinivas Goli & K. S. James, 2021. "Family Demography in India: Emerging Patterns and Its Challenges," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(2), pages 21582440211, April.
    20. Huang, Kaixing, 2018. "Secular Fertility Declines Hinder Long-Run Economic Growth," MPRA Paper 106977, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 03 Apr 2021.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rpstxx:v:75:y:2021:i:2:p:289-303. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rpst20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.