Born in the wake of disaster : A quantitative study of the effect on total fertility rates of severe natural disasters between 1994 and 2012 in Indonesian provinces

Abstract: Natural disasters have previously been found to have a positive effect on fertility due to incentives to use births to replace children lost and insure against increased risk. Using a simple demand framework for children, this paper contributes to the literature by re-examining this interaction under a new set of methodological conditions through the inclusion of a wider spectrum of cases than often used in previous works. OLS fixed effects regressions are performed using data from Indonesia and no support for the hypothesis is found. The findings are robust and contrast with former research. To provide nuance and insight to the results, the wanted total fertility rate and the prevalence of contraceptive use are utilised as alternative dependent variables.