Trends and Age-Period-Cohort Effects of Fertility Rate: Analysis of 26,224 Married Women in Taiwan

I-Shiang Tzeng, Kuo-Hu Chen, Yungling L. Lee and Wen-Shan Yang
Additional contact information
I-Shiang Tzeng: Department of Research, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City 23142, Taiwan
Kuo-Hu Chen: Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City 23142, Taiwan
Yungling L. Lee: Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Health, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10055, Taiwan
Wen-Shan Yang: Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 24, 1-12

Abstract: Taiwan and a few Asian societies have had among the lowest fertility rates in the world for the past decade. Understanding the reasons behind the low fertility and designing policies accordingly to improve fertility has been a priority of governments in the region. It what follows we examine the low fertility rate in Taiwan by studying the trend of actual fertility rate and desired fertility rate in Taiwan using an age-period-cohort (APC) model. Using the Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice (KAP) of contraception survey data between 1973 and 2004, we applied APC analyses on the actual fertility rate and desired fertility rate of married women. We found that youngest cohorts (the mid-cohort year 1983) had 10% higher actual fertility and 15% higher desired fertility compared to those who were born in 1959–1965, respectively. Additionally, we attributed current lowest-low fertility (at or below 1.3) to late marriages. There is a lag between the actual and desired fertility rates in KAP survey due to tempo effect. Furthermore, the trends of the cohort effects of both fertility rates in KAP surveys are reversing in Taiwan. Consequently, increase total fertility rate (TFR) should encourage marriage among the marriageable population and reward married and childbearing households.

Keywords: fertility; age-specific fertility rate; women; cohort effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/24/4952/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/24/4952/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:24:p:4952-:d:294887

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().