Topic
Fertility
About: Fertility is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 29988 publications have been published within this topic receiving 681106 citations.
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TL;DR: Examination of fertility and mortality patterns in six free-living chimpanzee populations finds no evidence that menopause is a typical characteristic of chimpanzee life histories, in contrast to recent claims.
230 citations
TL;DR: The results suggest that children are a long-term investment in well-being, and highlight the importance of the life-cycle stage and contextual factors in explaining the happiness/fertility association.
Abstract: The literature on fertility and happiness has neglected comparative analysis. We investigate the fertility-happiness association using data for 86 countries. We find that globally, happiness decreases with the number of children. This association, however, is strongly modified by individual and contextual factors. Most importantly, we find that the association between happiness and fertility evolves from negative to neutral to positive above age 40, and is strongest among those who are likely to benefit most from upward intergenerational transfers. In addition, analyses by welfare regime show that the negative fertility-happiness association for younger adults is weakest in countries with high public support for families, and the positive association above age 40 is strongest in countries where old-age support depends mostly on the family. Overall these results suggest that children are a long-term investment in well-being, and highlight the importance of the life-cycle stage and contextual factors in explaining the happiness-fertility association.
229 citations
TL;DR: Caldwell's "wealth flows" theory as discussed by the authors suggests that high fertility has been economically advantageous "to most families over most of human history," because children created "wealth" (broadly defined to include "all the money, goods, services and guarantees that one person provides to another"), and that wealth flows were directed upward from the younger to the older generation.
Abstract: FOR THE PAST HALF-CENTURY, demographers have been preoccupied with the issue of fertility reduction. In his influential book, Theory of Fertility Decline, Caldwell (1982: 350) asserted that "[t]he fundamental challenge in the demographic field is to explain the onset of fertility decline." The basic premise of Caldwell's "wealth flows' theory is that high fertility has been economically advantageous "to most families over most of human history,' because children created "wealth' (broadly defined to include "all the money, goods, services and guarantees that one person provides to another"), and that "wealth flows' were directed upward from the younger to the older generation (ibid.: 334, 333). He concluded that " [t]he onset of
229 citations
TL;DR: The authors provides a comparative overview of the evidence about the size, timing and nature of this decline in fertility rate across "mature" OECD countries, and about the effects of different measures introduced to deal with it.
Abstract: Fertility rates have declined in most OECD countries to levels that are well below those needed to secure generation replacement. While attitudes towards this decline in fertility rates differ across countries, several OECD governments have introduced — or are considering — specific measures aimed at countering it. Such measures are often justified by government’s wish of either reducing some of the negative consequences of population ageing for society as a whole, or of removing obstacles that discourage those women wishing to have more children from doing so, because of the negative economic consequences of childbearing and of the length of the associated responsibilities. This paper provides a comparative overview of the evidence about the size, timing and nature of this decline in fertility rate across "mature" OECD countries, and about the effects of different measures introduced to deal with it.
The first chapter of this paper reviews a range of indicators of the fertility ...
229 citations
TL;DR: Cigarette smoking among teenagers was associated with increases in disomic sperm and a diminution in specific aspects of semen quality that may affect male fertility and may increase future chances of fathering offspring with aneuploidy syndromes.
229 citations