Differential Rural-Urban Fertility in Mexico

Abstract

HAT rural populations are more fertile than urban is one of the most widelyobserved phenomena in the field of human fertility.' Most of the data on this subject have been collected in the industrialized countries of the West, but some evidence exists that this relationship is widespread among underdeveloped countries as well.2 Whetten's study, published in 1948, included data showing that the fertility of Mexican women was much lower in cities having more than ten thousand inhabitants than in localities having less than ten thousand.3 The present paper pursues further the problem of differential fertility in Mexico utilizing data that have more recently become available. Mexico, in common with other Latin American countries, has a high level of fertility. Since 1932, when the registration of births was considered to be reasonably complete, the annual crude birth rate has not dropped below 42.2 per thousand, and in 1947 it was 46.1 births per thousand population. In 1950 the crude birth rate was 45.7 per thousand.4 This high level of fertility, coupled with decreasing mortality, brought about an 18.7 per cent increase in Mexico's population between 1930 and 1940 and a 31.2 per cent increase between 1940 and 1950. This increase, however, has not been experienced equally by all segments of the population. Since at least the year 1900 urban places in Mexico have grown at faster rates than the country as a whole. Between 1930 and 1940 urban places increased 30.3 per cent; and between 1940 and 1950 they increased 73.0 per cent 5 as compared with 31.2 per cent for the country as a whole. This large increase in Mexico's urban population has come about in large part from differential internal migration. Indirect evidence of this is shown by an analysis of state-of-birth data from the Mexican Censuses of 1940 and 1950. During the decade, 1940-50, urban municipios experienced a total increase in population of 3,569,892 persons and the remaining municipios 2,550,846 persons. In urban municipios, the increase during the decade in the number of persons born in other states represents 30.4 per cent of their total population increase, while in the rural municipios the net increase in persons born in other states represents only 5.4 per cent of the total increase over the decade.6