Economic Factors Affecting Birth Rates in APEC Economies

In the last ten years, fertility rates for advanced and developing economies have been falling faster than expected. Korea has been leading the decline, but almost all advanced and developing economies have experienced accelerated decline in birth rates. Some researchers now expect the world to start experiencing falling global population as quickly as in 2030s. Even more surprising is that fertility rates for APEC economies have been falling even faster. APEC economies with the highest fertility rates are only slightly above the replacement rate of 2.1; with most economies, even developing members, in the 1% range. This paper is intended to be an exploratory dip into looking at correlations between birth rates and various economic data. We try to examine some of the popular reasons behind the falling birth rates, to see whether they have validity based on data, and see whether APEC economies are special in the sense that the birth rates are falling faster for APEC economies. The paper looks at economic data using panel data regressions to see why birth rates are falling overall, and why they are falling faster for APEC economies. We will concentrate more on trying to find correlations between variables in the data than coming up with theoretical reasons, which will require a much richer data set. In Section II, the paper lists some of the popular reasons often cited for declining birth rates; Section III is a short general discussion on the data used. Sections IV and V examines whether the data backs some of these popular reasons for the decline. Section IV looks at the relationship between some basic economic growth variables and fertility rates, and serves as a base for further analysis. Section V looks at the relationship between employment data and fertility rates, Given the faster fertility decline for APEC economies, Section VI looks at whether the formation of APEC had a role in the faster decline of fertility rates. Appendix A looks at the relationship between gender education disparities and fertility rates, and Appendix B is a short exploration on whether there is a case to be made that gender disparities in housework is a factor in lower fertility rates. In this paper, we used panel data of more than 180 economies to examine some factors affecting fertility rates. The factors examined included economic growth factors such as per capita GDP and GDP growth rates; gender based labor and employment factors such as male and female labor participation rate, and the ratio of male and female workers working in various industries. We also considered how some gender based disparities in education, and time spent doing housework for men and women affected fertility rates, though the results are less definite for these cases due to irregular nature of data available. We ran regressions on the global data set, and then for some regressions, only on data for APEC member economies.(the rest omitted)