Creating a Baby Boom. Not. #nlpoli

Flip over to the Occupy NL blog and you’ll see a critique of some recent SRBP posts on the provincial government’s bonus cash for live babies program.

Let’s summarise the critique and then go from there.  While this summary will get you through this post, to be fair and to make sure that nothing gets missed, go read the full post with all the charts included at Occupy NL.

The author takes issue with the SRBP approach in the initial post in the December series, which looked at the total number of births. He contends that we should look at “the average number of live births a woman can expect in her lifetime based on age-specific fertility rates in a given year.  Secondly, his analysis doesn't acknowledge that declining birth rates is a trend nation-wide and that provincial rates should be compared to what is happening in other provinces.”

Fertility Rates: a different perspective #nlpoli

Via Occupy Newfoundland and Labrador,  a different take on the success of the bootie call from the one presented in this corner recently.

-srbp-

The Teens and 40s #nlpoli

As the last instalment in our survey of birth rates, let’s take a look at the group 15 to 19 and the other end of the scale for statistics, women aged 40-44 at the time of the child’s birth.

The blue line is the number of births to mothers between ages 15 and 19.  From 810 births in 1991 down to 321 in 2010.  Note, though that the low point on the blue line is 2005 at 254.  Since then the number of births to mothers between 15 and 19 has risen steadily.  The rate is lower, though:  one in 32 in 1991 compared to one in 46 in 2010.

The numbers of babies born to women between 40 and 45 remains relatively very low.  Still, it has doubled in the past two decades from the 52 births in 1991 to the 100 that occurred in 2010.

The red line is the births for mothers aged 35 to 39.  It’s there for comparison.  In 1991, women in their late 30s gave birth to 387 babies.  That is just less than half the number of children born to mothers 19 and under.  Two decades later the teenagers are not having as many babies and the older women are having more.  Notice, however, that the 2010 moms  in the 35 to 39 category still were not having as many babies as the teenagers 20 years earlier.

The 30-Something Birth Rates #nlpoli

[Note: This is a revised version of the original post.  The earlier one  was based on the wrong tables]

The 2007 provincial government bounty on live births appears to have had little impact on trends in birth rates among the 20-somethings in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The same is true for the 30-somethings.

The 20-Something Birth Rates #nlpoli

As we told you a couple of weeks ago, it doesn’t look like the provincial government’s policy of paying cash for live births produced any improvement in the birthrate in the province except for the year they announced the bonus cash.

When you look at the birth rate by age of mother some other interesting things appear.

Let’s start with the 20-somethings.  Note:  this is a revised version of the post.  The original post was based on the wrong Statistics Canada tables.

So much for Danny’s Bootie Bonus #nlpoli

During the 2007 general election, the provincial Conservatives announced a policy under which they would pay $1000 to any woman in the province who gave birth to a live baby or or adopted one.

SRBP called it the bootie call.  Danny Williams tried to claim the idea was similar to an idea Hilary Clinton announced in the United States while she was trying to get the Democratic Party presidential nomination.  It wasn’t and SRBP explained the difference between the two and why the Bootie Call was unlikely to work.  It wouldn’t work because it hadn’t really worked in any of the other xenophobic places where they’d tried it.

Williams famously told reporters at the announcement in Corner Brook that “we can’t be a dying race.”

You don’t hear much about the Bootie Call from the Conservatives these days, but a look at the birth statistics will tell you what happened after the the provincial government started handing out the breeding bucks in 2008.

Sexist and inaccurate coverage at macleans.ca

Apparently, macleans.ca couldn’t find a story worth writing about from Newfoundland and Labrador so they had to showcase provincial environment minister Charlene Johnson as the poster child for provincial legislatures and their lack of maternity policies.

The thing is called “Why MPPs aren’t having more babies.”

There are more than a few factual problems with this piece so let’s start running through them.

1.  If you look at the demographics of the legislatures across the country you’ll like find that very few of the elected members are women and fewer still of those are in their child-bearing years.

2.  If you look at the men elected, you’ll also likely find most of them are at the point in their lives where their families are already started. A lack of clear maternity policies isn’t keeping women – let alone younger women – out of politics;  other issues are.

3.  It is incorrect to state that there is no maternity leave policy in the House of Assembly.  Johnson had to apply for leave, the same as anyone else would in any other situation.  Why the management commission or the Speaker hasn’t addressed her request yet is the problem. Johnson has obtained leave previously for medical issues.  This one would be no different, at the very least.  if Johnson wanted to take maternity leave, she’d have no trouble getting it.

4.  Therefore, the suggestion she’d have to pay a couple of hundred bucks is crap since it is highly unlikely the Tory cabinet minister would be denied maternity leave from a legislature dominated by the Tories and presided over by a Tory Speaker (even if by some remote chance her application might be denied.)

5.   There is an entirely different angle on this story, of course, which macleans.ca ignored in favour of the sexist one they took.  Like any, modern, progressive couple, Johnson and her husband didn’t see it as automatic that the woman had to take time off to care for the child.  After a month or so, Johnson is returning to work and her husband is taking parental leave .

6.  macleans.ca also didn’t note that Johnson is eligible for $1,000 for her child as part of the government’s bounty on live births announced during the last provincial general election.

7.  Referring to members of provincial legislatures as MPPs suggests that someone at macleans.ca needs to check the old style guide.  That particular appellation – short for member of the provincial parliament – is strictly found in Ontari-ari-ario.  They are members of the National Assembly in Quebec and Members of  the House of Assembly in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Canadian Press warns against using the abbreviations for provincial legislature members since the titles vary.  Good advice, but even in a pinch MLA – member of the legislative assembly – is generic enough to pass.

8.  Stories macleans.ca ignored in favour of this one:

-  Public funds diverted to partisan purposes (rather timely given goings-on in the U.K.

- The related story of a partisan appointed as chief electoral officer

And that’s just two of the juicier ones with some national relevance.

9.  As a last note, though, it was nice to see Judy Tyabji back in the news again.

-srbp-

Baby Talk

A news release on Tuesday from the provincial government agency that collects and analyses health statistics showed the number of live births in the province in 2008 at 4905, the highest number “in any year since 1999”.

That’s true but more than a few people wondered why the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Health Information took the arbitrary year 1999 aside from the fact it is convenient to measure by decade. The other thing people wondered is why the agency would editorialise with the claim that “[t]his increase in the number of births is a positive step toward population growth for our province.”

The analysts at NLCHI ought to know that the number of live births is just one factor in population trending.  In addition, they would need to understand the cause for the increase, year over year, to see if this is actually something other than an anomaly in what has otherwise been a fairly steady decline in the number of live births to mothers whose residence is Newfoundland and Labrador.

A look at NLCHI figures on live births going back to 1995 (chart, left) shows the long term trending.

The number of births has been declining for some time.

The number for 2008 is the highest number of births over the past decade, except for 1999.  There were more than 5,000 live births that year.

The figures for 2006 and 2007 aren’t available, apparently. NLCHI didn’t release any data and only described the 2008 figures as being more than 300 higher than 2007.  Statistics Canada figures cover the period up to 2006 and they are the same as the NLCHI figures.

It’s not hard to understand the declining number of births in the 1990s.  Outmigration in the late 1990s took about 70,000 people out of the population, most of them in their child-bearing years.

The increase over the last four years is most likely due to a general improvement in the economy.  The population continued to decline annually throughout the period and only showed an overall increase within the past year or so.

A look at the crude birth rate (live births per thousand of population) gives another perspective. The birth rate declined precipitously as the population dropped among people of child-bearing age.

After the major outmigration ended, the rate stabilized again and until the economy really started to surge the rate stayed relatively low.

One of the things to bear in mind when looking at these numbers is the inherent lag in births from time of conception. That sounds like a penetrating insight into the obvious but since some people are undoubtedly going to credit the government’s pro-natal policy for the increase the time lag has to be factored in.

Children born in late 2008 reflect parental decisions (even allowing for surprises) taken in the early part of the year.  Children born in the first few months of 2008 were conceived before the bootie call announcement in September 2007.  That time lag is the reason why the overall economic climate might have more of an impact on the decision to have children than a cash bounty of $1,000 for each live birth and $100 per month per child for the first year after birth.

Statistics Update:  The number crunching labradore picks up on the decline thingy.  He points out that the number of births in the province has been declining every year since 1956 or so.  There have been periodic upticks but the trend is decidedly downward.

Skeptics update: To go with that, there’s a Bond Papers post from February that discusses some comments the finance minister made to Voice of the Cabinet Minister during polling season.

At that time, we were skeptical that the 4900 figure was real.  We are still a little curious about the number and the timing of the release.

Halfway through 2008 and the preliminary figures showed everything on track to deliver about 4500.  That’s an even more curious figure since the cash allocated by government for the program – which includes adoptions not accounted for in all the live birth numbers – works out to be 4500 children annually. 

But as for 2008, even allowing for season variation and the nine month time lag, that would mean all the extra kiddies were hatched in the second half of the year. Makes you scratch your head a bit.

And if all that weren’t enough, consider this line from the provincial government’s main statistics agency:

The number of births has been trending downward for four decades because of declining fertility rates and, more recently, a decline in the number of women of child-bearing age.

That pretty much says it all.  The population of people willing and able to have babies has been getting relatively smaller in this province. We’d have to go into a more detailed demographic breakout to see if there is an echo generation showing up.  That’s the offspring of a previous boom suddenly showing up having children.  It happened about 20-odd years ago as the children of baby boomers started reaching child-bearing age. We might be just at the leading edge of time when the baby-boomers’ grandchildren are starting to have babies.

As labradore noted at the time, since the population in child-bearing age has been going on, a baby crop of 4900 would mean that fewer people are having more children.

Sorta runs against what you’d expect.

 

-srbp-

Bootie call stats – humping your leg version

As labradore has noted, a story turned up on voice of the cabinet minister on Friday claiming that there had been 4900 live births in the province in 2008.

Interestingly enough, the provincial government’s own research and analysis division figures for 2008 don’t jive with what labradore notes would be the most dramatically successful breeding program in the world.

In the third quarter of 2008, there were 1,138 live births in Newfoundland and Labrador. Couple that with the first quarter result of 1025 and you have 2163 live births in six months of 2008.  That makes it highly unlikely that the other 2800 occurred in the remaining half year, especially considering the seasonal variation.

Maybe there’s a discrepancy because the bootie call also gives cash for adoptions. Still though 400 adoptions would mean four hundred babies brought into the province from outside since the total number of births captures all children born in the province.

But still, notice the figures. 

Two months after the old year ended there are still 800 people who haven’t submitted their bootie call cash applications, if that story is true.  On top of that, the government bureaucrats are so slow getting their act together that only 3300 people have gotten any cash thus far.

That’s pretty sucky all ‘round.  Either people aren’t hearing about the bootie call cash or they aren’t getting their applications in or there just aren’t that many babies being cranked out.

They certainly aren’t getting their cash in a timely way.  Six weeks to process the application and therefore starting out owing people $1200 bucks in benefits right off the bat.  The bootie call consists of a cool grand for the live wriggler and then $100 a month for 12 months.

But let’s go back to that 4900 figure again because something just isn’t right.

The finance minister’s own statement and government’s budgeting on this don’t add up either.  They’ve allocated $12.4 million in 2008 for the project which works out to over 5600 babies.  Then they’ve allocated $9.9 million annually thereafter for it. That works out to roughly 4500 children which is the exact figure in the minister’s statement:

The combined total of births and adoptions each year is approximately 4,500.

So anyway, the numbers don’t add up. Looks like voice of the cabinet minister is just drying humping on the bootie call.

-srbp-