Valerie J. Hull

The relation of economic class and fertility: An analysis of some Indonesian data

Summary Many recent fertility studies in developing societies put forward the hypothesis of a negative relation between economic class and fertility. Data showing a positive relationship are frequently dismissed a priori as resulting from the reporting errors of illiterate women. This study draws on data from Indonesias 1971 Census, a 1973 sample survey of fertility and mortality, and an intensive community study in Java, to argue that an observed positive relation between class and fertility is real, and is related to differences in patterns of marital disruption, postpartum abstinence, and fecundity. The positive relation may be reversed in the future as changes in these patterns, and the impact of the national family planning programme, affect the family structure of each class differently. Had the positive relation in this context been attributed offhand to reporting errors, these important socio-economic changes would have been misunderstood, and possibly ignored.

A Study of Birth Interval Dynamics in Rural Java

Recent demographic studies have shown that Java, the most populous and densely settled island of Indonesia, has the lowest recorded fertility of the country’s major regions (1, 2). Within Java, fertility is lower among the ethnic Javanese of the provinces of East and Central Java than among the smaller group of Sundanese in West Java. Furthermore, there is evidence that among the rural Javanese, differences also exist in fertility according to socioeconomic status; that is, fertility is lower among poor villagers than among relatively better-off rural dwellers (3, 4, 5, 6). (See Chart 1).

Intermediate variables in the explanation of differential fertility: results of a village study in rural Java.

A tendency for fertility to be higher among middle-class women than among lower-class women has been found in all the recent sources of data on fertility levels and patterns in Indonesia. After briefly reviewing these findings, this article presents the results of a community study in rural Java which systematically investigates the positive relation between fertility and socioeconomic status, focusing on the so- called intermediate variables (first inventoried by Davis and Blake in 1956) which directly determine fertility. Differential patterns of marital stability, secondary sterility, and the practice of postpartum abstinence in particular were found to contribute to the contrasts in fertility levels observed. The use of modern contraceptives, a recent innovation at the time of the study, was found to a greater extent among middle-class women, and may prove to be an important determinant of future patterns of fertility and fertility differentials.