Abstract
This study applies survival analysis to the birth histories from 317 national surveys to model pathways to low fertility in 83 less-developed countries between 1965 and 2014. It presents period measures of parity progression, the length of birth intervals and total fertility that have been standardized fully for age, parity, and interval duration. It also examines parity-specific trends in the proportion of women who want no more children. Outside sub-Saharan Africa, fertility transition was dominated by parity-specific family size limitation. As the transition progressed, women also began to postpone their next birth for lengthy periods in many countries. During the first half of the fertility transition in much of sub-Saharan Africa and in some other countries, however, women stopped childbearing without targeting particular family sizes. Moreover, birth intervals in sub-Saharan Africa have been lengthening since the onset of the transition. Birth control is not restricted to a dichotomy between limitation and spacing. Other reasons for curtailing childbearing and postponing having another birth also shape countries’ pathways through fertility transition.
Highlights
Fertility transition followed a different path in Kenya
The concept of postponement originated in the discovery that very long birth intervals had emerged during the course of fertility transition in Southern Africa (Timæus and Moultrie 2008)
This study adopts a wider perspective and examines both parity progression and birth interval dynamics by birth order. This approach has already proved informative in East Africa (Towriss and Timæus 2018) and becomes essential in analyses that extend beyond Africa to regions where parity-specific limitation is important
Summary
Outside sub-Saharan Africa, the only countries in which the median closed birth interval rose above three years before total fertility fell to fewer than 4.5 children per woman were Bangladesh and Tajikistan. Africa and the five relatively low fertility sub-Saharan African countries with a mixed pattern of parity progression at the end of the study period, these countries are Bangladesh, Egypt, and Indonesia.
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