Fertility Levels and Differentials in Argentina in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to estimate the level of fertility in Argentina around 1895 and to assess the existence of fertility differentials. The samples including 10944 and 108672 people enumerated in 1869 and 1895 respectively were drawn during the second half of 1966 and the beginning of 1967. This paper is based mainly on the results of the Second National Population Census (1895). Other information is also taken into account: the First National Population Census (1869) the Provincial Census of Santa Fe (1887) the Municipal Census of Buenos Aires (1887) and data on international migration. By means of two independent procedures a high level of fertility is estimated for the Argentinean population equivalent to an average of six children per woman at 50 years of age equivalent to an annual crude birth rate of 45/1000 in 1895. The ratio of children aged 0-4 to women aged 20-44 was computed after adjusting the number of children to correct an omission for six different geographic areas. The ratio for Buenos Aires is 711/1000; the remaining regions ranged from 901 to 1110/1000. The national value of 960/1000 was close to the US level between 1840 and 1850. Argentinean married women exhibited higher fertility than their foreign-born immigrant counterparts. Among the immigrants Italian women had the highest and French women the lowest fertility. The level of completed fertility among Argentineans suggests that they were also beginning to apply some kind of birth control. The urban indices were lower than the rural ones. Fertility was lower among literate than illiterate women; however the difference was small and statistically not significant. Among immigrants the lower fertility level of iterates compared to illiterates surfaced especially in urban areas. The results are based on deficient information and a debatable hypothesis. The differentials in fertility at a time when the country was undergoing a vigorous social and economic development could have anticipated the decline in fertility that gathered momentum after 1914.