What Supports Early Fertility in a Developing Country: The Case of Kyrgyzstan

Konstantin Kazenin , Stockholm University
Vladimir Kozlov, Leibniz-Institut für Ost- und Südost Europa Forschung

The paper attempts to determine factors which timing of transition to motherhood is related to in a country without fertility postponement. Discovering these factors is important for understanding causes of ‘resistance’ to fertility postponement observed in the recent years in a number of developing countries of MENA, Central Asia and some other regions of the world. We consider social and cultural correlates of fertility timing in Kyrgyzstan (Central Asia), a country which did not demonstrate postponement during the recent decade and whose TFR in that period was fluctuating at levels similar to other developing countries without postponement (between 2.5 and 4). Using two consecutive surveys conducted in Kyrgyzstan, MICS2014 and MICS2018, we run proportional risk models for transition to 1st union and for 1st child bearing in union. Comparing cohorts born from 1965 on, we see that both risks become significantly higher for the youngest cohorts. Also education, labor experience and some indicators of gender relations in woman’s family are significant for the risks under study. Significant timing differences between women of different ethnicities are also found and possible accounts for these differences are suggested. In the present paper we show the analysis based only on the MICS2014 (and we also use DHS2012 for some checks). At the conference talk we intend to consider result of the recently released MICS2018, too, what will allow to include younger women (born in 1999-2002) in the analysis.

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 Presented in Session 127. Fertility Timing