State of World Population 2012 - UNFPA Haiti

tradeoff that induces parents to invest moreresources into each child when the number ofchildren falls.Household savings, income and assetsImproved health and longer life-expectanciesthat can result from better access to reproductivehealth services, including family planning,alter decisions not only about education, butalso about expenditures and savings over anindividual’s lifetime. With declines in fertility,individuals are less likely to rely on childrenfor old age-support and insurance. They arethus more inclined to save for their ownretirement. The impetus to save is furtherreinforced by improved health and increasedlife expectancy since retirement becomes areasonable prospect, and the length of retirementalso increases. There is ample evidenceto support this relationship between fertilitydecline and savings rates (Bloom and Canning,2008). Many studies find a positive correlationbetween declines in fertility or increases in lifeexpectancy on the one hand, and savings rateson the other.In Taiwan, Province of China, for example,the private savings rate rose from 5 per centin the 1950s to over 20 per cent in the 1980s,almost synchronously with improvements in lifeexpectancy (Tsai, Chu and Chung, 2000). Thiseffect is amplified with the adoption of welfareand social security systems.Some of the best micro-level evidence of therelationship between lower fertility, improvedreproductive health, and income comes againfrom Matlab, Bangladesh (Joshi and Schultz,2007; Schultz, 2008; Barham, 2009; Schultz,2009). The overall evidence suggests thatdeclines in fertility and child mortality contributedto poverty alleviation: sons receivedsignificantly more schooling, daughters had abetter nutritional status, and better educatedwomen had proportionately higher wage ratesand lived in households with proportionatelygreater assets. Households in villages coveredby the programme reported 25 per cent moreassets per adult, and held smaller shares ofhousehold assets in forms which complementchild labour, such as livestock and fishingor even land for agricultural annual cultivation.They held a larger share of their assets infinancial savings, jewelry, orchards and ponds,housing, and consumer durables, which may beassets that are better substitutes for old age supportprovided traditionally by children.Improved access to family planning, declinesin fertility, the reduction of maternal mortalityand maternal morbidity and the improvementof child health also increase savings and incomethrough the reduction of spending to copewith “health shocks,” such as a sudden loss ofearnings, the dissolution of households and areduction in the health of surviving householdmembers, particularly children. Improved healthalso contributes to economic productivity.Shifts in intra-household decision-makingThe availability of reproductive health services,particularly family planning, also alters powerstructures within households. In contexts wheremen and women differ in their fertility preferences,and where family planning services areaccessible to women independently, greatercontrol over their fertility translates into greaterbargaining power, autonomy and decisionmakingcapacity within the family.An example of this at the country level comesfrom Bangladesh. The rapid decline in fertility,from approximately six children per woman inthe 1970s to under three children per woman80 CHAPTER 4: THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACT OF FAMILY PLANNING