The Bilateral Influence of Global Trade and Aid Partners on Fertility Levels

Joan M Ryan, University of Pennsylvania

While the determinants of fertility decline have been well studied, the international diffusion of norms that trigger the onset of sustained fertility decline have hitherto remained understudied on a global scale. In this paper, I aim to understand countries’ fertility decline within the context of the fertility dynamics of their geographic neighbours and important trade or aid partners. By using networks built out of bilateral trade and aid flows with data from the UN and OECD databases, I use stochastic actor-oriented modelling (SAOM) to investigate how trade or aid partners’ fertility changes translate to a country’s own fertility changes. Previous work that examined how the embeddedness of countries within trade and aid global networks found a universally negative relationship between network embeddedness and fertility levels which were especially pronounced for lower income countries, suggesting a more pronounced susceptibility to global fertility norms among these countries. I aim to further examine how the global political economy manifests in bilateral fertility norm diffusion by including country-level income levels into the SAOM.

Keywords: Social network methods, Fertility, Population and Development

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