Post-Soviet economic crisis and fertility decline: parity-specific trends in Tajikistan

David CliffordSupervisors: Andrew Hinde and Jane Falkingham

Outline

• Background: Tajikistan• Motivations for study focus• Approach• Data – birth histories from surveys• Results• Final thoughts

Background: Tajikistan

Background: Tajikistan

• Demographically:– Highest fertility of Soviet Republics at time of

independence– early and universal marriage, swift progression to

childbearing– Non-marital childbearing very rare

• Independent from the Soviet Union in Sept. 1991• Poorest of former Republics at time of

independence....and experienced most severe economic crisis since

• Economic crisis exacerbated by civil war– May 1992 onwards, concentrated in Southern

Tajikistan– Worst fighting second half of 1992– Followed by period of civil unrest until 1997– Casualties estimated at between 20,000 and

100,000– Estimated 70,000 refugees; 600,000+ IDPs

Economic crisis in Tajikistan

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20.0

40.0

60.0

80.0

100.0

120.0

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Year

Ind

ex

Va

lue

(1

98

9=

10

0)

Real GDP

Real Wages

Motivation

• Collapse of socialism in C and E Europe and FSU• These countries offer ‘potentially rich’ material for

an examination of the effects of dramatic sociopolitical and economic transformations on marital and fertility behaviour (Agadjanian 1999)

• Key word: ‘potentially’…– E Europe under researched (Caldwell and

Schindlmayr 2003)..– post-Soviet Central Asia even more so..– least known of all about Tajikistan (Gentile

2005)

What work has been done on post-socialist change has shown..

• E Europe now the lowest fertility region in the world, after precipitous fertility decline in 1990s

• Even larger absolute fertility declines in countries of Central Asia

But for Tajikistan..• whether there has been a decline in fertility has

not been formally established

• Problem of under-registration of births– Increase in births at home– Introduction of registration fee– <50% of newborns officially registered in first

six months (2000)• Hence TFRs ‘are probably much higher than most

statistics would suggest’ (Gentile 2005)– TFRs based on vital registration data do show a

fertility decline..– ..but is this simply an artefact of reduced

registration?

Fertility trends in Central Asia

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1

2

3

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5

TF

R

1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002Year

Tajikistan VR

Turkmenistan VR S

Uzbekistan VR S

Kyrgyzstan VR S

Kazakhstan VR S

Focus

• To establish whether total fertility in Tajikistan has declined since end of Soviet Union, and to quantify extent of decline

– TFR and ASFRs over time– Jackknife methods to calculate standard errors and CIs

Focus

• To explore the ‘pattern’ of fertility change in post-Soviet Tajikistan - using parity specific fertility rates

• Evidence from other FSU countries: – dramatic reduction in higher-order birth rates

• attributed to severe decline in living standards– robust first birth rates, despite overall fertility

decline• In some cases, an increase in early first births• Particularly in first half of 1990s• Marriage and childbearing as ‘strategy’ for coping

with uncertainty? (Friedman et al. 1994)

Approach• Fertility change in period framework• Using survey birth history data.

– Fertility rates unaffected by under-registration• Not using a regression approach

– Often studies relate demographic variables to individual-level covariates (region, education..)

– Here focus is on macro-level explanators (economic crisis, civil war..) - which aren’t included in the survey

– and explaining temporal change – no time-varying covariates in the survey

• Descriptive interpretation of trends: Ní Bhrolcháin and Dyson (2007)

Birth history data

• Tajikistan Living Standards Survey (2003)

• 6,196 women 15-49– Calculated fertility rates for 15 years before the

survey..– so to look at changes in fertility over time, have to

examine TFR 15-34

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50

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35019

76

1978

1980

1982

1984

1986

1988

1990

1992

1994

1996

1998

2000

Year

AS

FR

15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34

Age-Specific Fertility Rates: Vital Registration and Survey

Results

• Fertility has declined in post-Soviet Tajikistan– Vital registration (VR) does underestimate fertility– but fertility decline in VR data not simply

reflection of decreased registration– Consistent and significant declines in fertility

since independence:

Period TFR 15-34 Standard error 95% CI

1990-92 4.27 0.102 4.07 4.48

1993-95 3.85 0.090 3.67 4.03

1996-98 3.44 0.084 3.27 3.61

1999-2001 3.27 0.092 3.09 3.45

Parity Specific Fertility Rates

1st half of the 1990s

• Significant declines in fertility at higher orders• Spatially pervasive – so not just effect of civil

war• Timing and scale of decline suggest response

to economic crisis• Achieved without widespread access to modern

contraception?

1st half of the 1990s

• First birth rates robust – and increase in early births

• Related to increase in marriage (esp. early marriage) in early post-independence period

• A strategy for coping with economic crisis and uncertainty?

– women become members of their husband’s household after marriage (Harris 2004)

– Shemyakina (WP:13) in times of economic crisis accentuated by conflict ‘girls may be… married off to lift the [economic] burden from their families’

From mid-1990s

• Higher order fertility quite robust– Earlier declines a one-off response to economic

crisis, not prolongued transition?• Significant declines in first birth rates

– Associated with significant declines in marriage rates (60% decrease from 1995-2004)

Final thoughts

• Survey data provides evidence of post-Soviet fertility decline

• Interesting case of decline– Not context of modernisation– Decrease in living standards,

educational enrollment, health

• Further work needed on the impact of migration on nuptiality and fertility

First Marriage and First Birth Rates

Next Step.. What caused decline in marriage rates?

• One theory: labour migration has led to shortage of men to marry (estimated 1m international migrants)

• Examining data on migration: survey has info. on migrant members of the household, and when they first moved away– Temporal trends in migration

• Relate it to trend in marriage rates– Cross-sectional

• Are the migrant workers primarily single?• Are the areas with large numbers of single

male migrants also those showing declines in marriage?

e-mail: dmc104@soton.ac.uk