Abstract
The fertility opportunity hypothesis suggests that individuals and couples adjust family size in response to their perception that economic opportunity is increasing (or diminishing.) A sense that opportunities are expanding encourages a relatively high, even rising, family size target. On the contrary, the perception that opportunities and resources will fall short of satisfying the aspirations of oneself or family lead to lowering family size targets. The literature suggests that family size target translates into completed family size on the order of 85 to 90 percent. The economic collapse of former “Asian tigers” in late summer, 1997, offered a chance to test the hypothesis prospectively. In, 1998, an author (Abernethy) predicted that fertility rates in the nine Asian tiger economies would fall during the 1997-1999 interval at a faster rate than had been observed in immediately preceding two-year intervals. This paper reports the results of tests of the hypothesis with respect to the Asian tigers and several other country clusters for which no particular prediction was made. Preliminary findings appear to support the fertility opportunity hypothesis.
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Abernethy, V.D., Penaloza, R.V. Fertility Decline in Former “Asian Tigers”. Population and Environment 23, 245–265 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013022428206
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013022428206