Reproductive intentions

The small Japanese town of Nagi (population: 5,700), has been getting so many visitors, mainly government policymakers and media people, that the place is now charging visitor fees.

The visitors are interested in how Nagi has been able to get their residents to change their reproductive intentions, a term from demography, resulting in a population growth rate that is twice that of the national average.

From the 1970s up to about the turn of the century, global interest centered on “population explosion” but over the years, interest has shifted to low fertility rates, especially in developed countries.

Accompanying the low fertility rates has been a graying of the population, the baby boomers that followed World War II and who have become senior citizens, without enough young people to care for them. Several of these graying countries have had to import caregivers from developing countries, the Philippines being one of the exporters.

Governments affected by low fertility rates have been at wits’ end as to how to get young people to reproduce. China was an extreme example, implementing a strict one-child per couple policy from 1980 to 2016, with penalties for those who did not comply. The policy has since been reversed; the Chinese government is now urging couples to reproduce but the calls are largely unheeded with couples unwilling to reproduce because it’s become so expensive to raise children.

Japan achieved low fertility rates without draconian policies but now that they have the world’s largest percentage of senior citizens, they are desperately and largely unsuccessfully urging couples to reproduce.

Nagi has been an astounding success and the reason seems to be a generous package of incentives rather than piecemeal measures. For starters, the local government gives a 100,000 yen (about P400,000) one-off payment for each child that’s born. They charge $420 monthly for a daycare package for the first child, which is halved for the second child. No charges for the third and succeeding children.

There is also a daycare facility, managed by health staff and volunteers (mainly elderly women), which charges 300 yen (about P120) an hour, so parents run errands and get counseling from experienced parents on childcare. Parents say the daycare also gives their children an opportunity to play with other young ones.

The benefits continue as the child grows up. There’s free health care up to the age of 18. School meals are subsidized. Some of the incentives are meant to attract outsiders to move to Nagi. Senior high school students living out of town are bused in for a subsidized fare. Low house rents are offered to “migrant” couples. The labor market includes many part-time jobs to give flexibility to parents.

Nagi also seems to have a “peer effect” on reproductive intentions, i.e., couples deciding to have more children when they see other couples managing to have several children with minimal difficulties.

Reading all the articles praising Nagi’s successes got me thinking about how the social policies can, ironically, work the other way around as well: lowering fertility rates in poor countries.

The evidence has been clear from the research: It is poverty that drives couples to have more children because the children are seen not as extra mouths to feed but as extra hands for work, out in the fields in rural areas and in the streets and sweatshops of the cities.

With weak social security benefits and paltry pensions for the elderly, children are seen as old-age insurance: caregivers and breadwinners, especially if they work overseas.

Nagi’s experiences also support research findings that have been made over the last few decades: Poor parents tend to have more children because they are not sure how many will survive to adulthood. Improve the survival of infants and children and people will have fewer children.

I have been asking my students about their reproductive intentions for years now and notice that some of them say they do not even intend to have children, something unheard of about 20 years ago.

There are many other determinants of reproductive intentions: religious affiliation, concepts of masculinity and femininity, and, importantly, access to reproductive information and services. What I’ve discussed, taking off from Nagi in Japan, are the structural shapers of reproductive intentions.

[email protected]