The Demography of an Equitable and Stable Intergenerational Transfer System
De Santis Gustavo
PAYG (Pay-As-You-Go) transfer schemes may take different forms. In this article I classify those proposed in the literature in three main classes. I present a new variant, labelled ES, or "Equitable and Stable", and discuss some of its distinctive features, with special regards to its demographic rationale. There are two main innovations in the proposed system: 1) its use of a reference, instead of the current, age structure, with the implication that, in each period, the system may incur deficits, or accumulate assets, that even out in the long run; 2) its use of average incomes of age groups (the young, adults, and the elderly) instead of average incomes of social groups (workers and pensioners). These novelties, combined with the use of relative (as opposed to absolute) incomes, create an original mechanism. Theoretical arguments and computer simulations indicate that ES differs from, and compares favourably with, other versions of PAYG.
Two Ages of Worker Emigration. Migration and Non-Migration in an Industrial Village
Renahy Nicolas, Détang-Dessendre Cécile, Gojard Séverine
Based on the study of a cohort of individuals born between 1939 and 1946 enumerated in an industrial village in eastern France in the 1954 census, this article presents a model of working-class non-migration. The integration of unskilled workers is shown to proceed by marriage with local-born women, followed by the local social reproduction of worker status by first-born sons. A labour aristocracy thus emerges, through kinship mechanisms that correspond to a given state of the labour market.
This result is obtained by combining an ethnographic survey (reconstruction of the trajectories of lines of descent in space and in an employment system) and statistical analysis (MCA and failure-time models). The same operation conducted on a cohort of individuals born in the 1960s indicates that the model no longer functions. As a result of the local unemployment crisis, the local origins that were the key to access to the local labour market in the 1960s become an incentive to migration in the 1980s.
The Role of Abortion in the Fertility Transition in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) during the 1990s
Guillaume Agnès
Like many African countries, Côte d’Ivoire has entered a phase of fertility transition which is particularly pronounced in urban areas. These changes are occurring in a context of low contraceptive prevalence, raising the question of the contribution of other determinants, particularly abortion, to the fertility decline.
A study conducted in Abidjan on women consulting at health centres has been used to make a detailed analysis of the methods of fertility regulation and of the link between abortion and fertility. Despite being illegal, the practice of abortion is increasingly common, particularly among young women and from the beginning of reproductive life. Contraception and abortion are sometimes complementary, with abortion being resorted to following contraceptive failure (particularly of natural methods). In some cases it seems that the experience of an abortion leads to adoption of effective methods, although this is not systematic. The data presented here show that fertility decline in Abidjan cannot be understood without taking into account the major contribution of abortion practices.
Reproductive Strategies and Decisions in Senegal: The Role of Child Mortality
Randall Sara, Legrand Thomas
Mortality decline has been assumed to play an important role in fertility transitions. Demographers often attempt to explain the correlation between these phenomena by "rational reproductive decision-making" on the part of individual actors, an idea which follows on from theories developed out of quantitative associations and analyses. In this study, we use qualitative data from rural and urban sites in Senegal to consider the degree to which plausible demographic hypotheses are borne out in people’s discourse on reproductive decision-making. In-depth interviews with men and women are used to examine awareness and conscious reasoning about both replacement and insurance motivations, perception of mortality and other risks in relation to childbearing and the extent to which people have the agency to act upon their perceptions. The limited evidence of explicit replacement and insurance strategies suggest their impact on fertility in Wolof Senegal is small, even amongst the urban educated elite for whom costs of children in terms of money and parental time are much more important constraints. Child mortality is not a major component of the fertility decision-making discourse.
Polygyny and Fertility in Rural Senegal
Lardoux Solène, Van De Walle Etienne
The aim of this study is to look at some determinants of fertility differences between monogamous and polygynous wives of ranks 1 to 3 or higher in two rural regions of Senegal. The measure of fertility is a dichotomous variable that refers to the occurrence of a birth during the 12 months prior to the census date. The analysis of cross-sectional data for the rural Tambacounda and Kolda regions from the 1988 Senegal census allowed us to test our hypotheses and to find the following results: first, the fertility of each wife decreases with the number of wives in the union; second, the wife of highest rank is more likely to have given birth in the previous year than her co-wives; as for the age of the husband, it appears to have a stronger effect for monogamists than for polygynists, for whom it is substantial only after 60; childbearing by one wife during the previous year increases the probability of a birth to a co-wife; finally, the presence of a first wife past the age of childbearing has no effect on the fertility of her co-wives.
