Retrospective Fertility Histories Research Articles

Educational differences in timing and quantum of childbearing in Britain

© 2015 Ann Berrington, Juliet Stone & Eva Beaujouan. Background Increased postponement of fertility, especially among higher-educated women, means it is important to know whether women recuperate births at older ages, but evidence for the UK is lacking. The extent to which the timing and quantum of mothers' fertility underlie the strong educational gradient in completed family size is also unclear. Objective We investigate the relative contributions of childlessness, timing, and quantum to educational differences in completed fertility within cohorts born between 1940 and 1969. Methods We analyse retrospective fertility histories from 44,351 women, born 1940-1969, interviewed in the British General Household Survey (1979-2009) and the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009-2010). After describing educational differences in the timing of first birth and parity distributions, we quantify the relative contributions of childlessness, delayed entry into motherhood, and fertility rates conditional upon age at entry into motherhood, to educational differences in completed family size. Results Within each cohort, the educational gradient in completed family size is explained, in demographic accounting terms, almost entirely by educational differences in the proportions remaining childless and the age distribution of mothers at entry into motherhood. Conditional upon age at entry into motherhood, subsequent fertility rates are similar across educational groups and across cohorts.Conclusions Unlike for some other European countries, the postponement of motherhood to later ages in Britain has not resulted in a significant increase in childbearing among more-educated women who enter motherhood at later ages. The stability of aggregate measures of completed fertility in Britain is not the result of a straightforward process of postponement followed by recuperation.

The German Generations and Gender Survey: Some Critical Reflections on the Validity of Fertility Histories

This paper validates the fertility histories of the German Generations and Gender Survey (GGS). Focusing on the cohorts 1930-69 of West German women, the total number of children, the parity distribution and the parity progression ratios are compared to external sources. One major result from this validation is that the German GGS understates the fertility for the older cohorts and overstates it for the younger ones. We presume that two mechanisms are responsible for this pattern in the German GGS: On the one hand, children who have left parental home are underreported in the retrospective fertility histories. On the other hand, women with small children are easier to reach by the interviewer. These two mechanisms taken together produce too low numbers of children for the older and too high ones for the younger cohorts. Extending the validation to marital histories has revealed a similar bias. Our general conclusion from this investigation is that the German GGS may not be used for statistical analyses of cohort fertility and marriage trends. For subsequent surveys, we suggest integrating simple control questions in questionnaires with complex retrospective fertility and union histories.

Incomplete reporting of men’s fertility in the united states and britain: A research note

We evaluate men's retrospective fertility histories from the British Household Panel Survey and the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Further, we analyze the PSID men's panel-updated fertility histories for their possible superiority over retrospective collection. One third to one half of men's nonmarital births and births within previous marriages are missed in estimates from retrospective histories. Differential survey underrepresentation of previously married men compared with previously married women accounts for a substantial proportion of the deficits in previous-marriage fertility. More recent retrospective histories and panel-updated fertility histories improve reporting completeness, primarily by reducing the proportion of marital births from unions that are no longer intact at the survey date.

Effects of Schooling on Fertility, Labor Supply, and Investments in Children, with Evidence from Brazil

This study examined the impact of schooling on fertility decline in Brazil. Brazils fertility decline began with few organized family planning programs and continued during periods of economic growth and recession. It is argued that the link between schooling and fertility decline occurred through parents investment in producing healthy well-educated children and trading off quantity for quality. Data were obtained from retrospective fertility histories among over 100000 women who participated in the PNAD household survey in 1984. Fertility decline was only weakly associated with increased female labor force participation. The theoretical background suggests that schooling affects fertility investments in children and the labor market. Child survival varied widely between women with no schooling and women with 11 years of schooling. Mean schooling for males and females rose steadily over time. The most rapid increase occurred for 1940-54 birth cohorts. The percentage of women with under 1 year of schooling declined steadily for men and women and was faster for women (under 10% for the youngest cohort). An increase in wifes schooling from 0-4 years was associated with a decline in children by age 30 years of 0.85 births for younger women and 0.60 births for older women. A model predicted 68% of actual fertility decline in 1935-39 and 1951-53 cohorts. The effect of husbands schooling disappeared after 8 years of schooling while wifes effects continued to be negative. Labor force participation was less at lower levels of education. Schooling strongly effected measures of child quality.

Fertility Behaviour: Population and Society in a Rajasthan Village.

Fertility Behaviour: Population and Society in a Rajasthan Village is an important book as it explores the urgent and highly sensitive demographical problem of fertility behaviour through the intensive fieldwork method of social anthropology. It is a useful combination of the disciplines of demography and social anthropology. Tulsi Patel has studied a small village in the populous state of Rajasthan. In addition to the method of participant observation she has used village census, retrospective fertility histories of women, genealogies and case studies of men and women to interpret fertility trends. According to the author, objective conditions of life which include changes in the larger social order are importantly linked to the subjective orientations of people. This in turn influences norms regarding fertility behaviour. The importance of intensive studies of small communities such as this one, which are able to identify specific problems is therefore self evident. The author also looks at the 'fertility career' of a couple in relation to the different stages of development of the household. This is an indispensable book for all who are distressed by the manner in which population is growing on our part of the globe, but specially for, policy makers in government departments, administrators and researchers. Tulsi Patel teaches at the University of Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi.

Fertility in Prerevolutionary Rural China.

This paper challenges the conclusion reached in a recent reanalysis by Barclay et al. (Population Index 1976) of John Lossing Bucks 1929-31 survey of farm families in seven provinces of China that fertility in prerevolutionary rural China was at a moderate level compared with the fertility of other noncontracepting agrarian societies. It is argued here that the Buck survey sample was not representative of China that the means by which the data were collected prompt doubts about their accuracy and that the discarding of data for some localities biased the estimates. Higher fertility estimates derived from Taiwanese household registers of the period retrospective fertility histories of elderly Chinese women collected by the author and the findings of a 1930s study of vital events in central Kiangsu all suggest that fertility in premodern rural China if not unusually high was higher than the recent reassessment suggested. (authors)

The delineation of fertility strategies in a tribal population of India: the Koyas of Koraput District, Orissa.

Demographic data collected for a tribal population of India, the Koyas of Koraput District, Orissa, were examined in light of 2 models of reproductive behavior associated with the economic value of children: the replacement effect and son survivorship motivation. Both models are united in the concept that infant/child mortality affects subsequent fertility. The database consists of retrospective fertility histories of Koya women who had completed their reproductive period. The total number was 260, with the total offspring numbering 1407. 2 distinct cohorts of women were formed for the purpose of analysis, separated only by the criterion of offspring survival: women who had experienced infant child mortality (129 women with 739 children); and women who completed their reproductive period without suffering offspring loss of this nature (132 women with 668 children). The cohort without child loss had a mean parity of 5.10, lower than the average parity of 5.73 recorded for the cohort whose reproductive histories included at least 1 infant/child death. Age specific marital fertility and birth interval analyses indicated that this differential was because of biological, not behavioral, factors. The age pattern of fertility of females suffering offspring mortality failed to demonstrate a high rate of childbearing in the later age intervals of the reproductive period, a characteristic pattern of couples attempting to "replace" lost offspring. Birth interval analysis pointed to biological "interval effect," whereby infant/child mortality caused a cessation of lactation and hence a shortening of postpartum amenorrhea. Computer simulation further indicated that the higher fertility differential of the cohort experiencing offspring loss still did not result in high son survivorship values. The findings agree with earlier studies indicating that for predemographic transitional populations, economically motivated fertility strategies are ineffectual.

The educational status of parents, and infant and child mortality in rural North India

The task of this discussion is to disentangle the various forces which influence the probability of death for children and, where possible, to identify the independent role of education. This discussion is one of a series of explorations of the mortality and fertility experiences of a sample of couples from North India. The analysis is based on interviews with a rural sample of husbands and wives living in 120 villages in Uttar Pradesh State in India. Information concerning fertility and mortality is based on the retrospective fertility histories collected in 1972. The population is heavily dependent upon agriculture, and it is poor and has little formal education. Per capita income at the time of the survey was less than $100/year, and 52% of the husbands and 87% of the wives had never been to school. The crude birth rate is over 50/1000 and the total fertility rate is 7.7. The overall level of infant mortality in the uncorrected data is on the order of 170/1000 births. For the 2nd and 3rd years of life the mortality rate is 74/1000 children surviving the 1st year. There are considerable differences in the mortality experience of children according to the educational attainment of their parents. In general, the mortality differentials between those with no education and those with a moderate amount of education are small, but for all 3 measures of education, children with the most educated parents experience substantially lower levels of mortality. Those households where the mother has had some education tend to have lower female than male mortality rates, i.e., children of both sexes born into those households experience lower levels of mortality than do children born into households where neither parent or only the father is educated, but female children do particularly well. A clear measure of association between education and mortality is shown, but these measures are suggestive. To examine further the role of education as a determinant of mortality, the multivariate correlates of mortality in the neonatal and postneonatal periods are examined separately. In each case the determinants of death are examined in the context of a complex model of behavior. The regressions show a reasonably high degree of explanation of mortality during the 1st month of life, but education is not a significant explanatory variable in any of the regressions. In the multivariate context the influence of education in the postneonatal period is restricted to female births. Those girls born to households where the mother has received some education are significantly less likely to die than are the counterparts born to families where neither parent is educated or just the father has attended school. In sum, education is not a statistically significant predictor for the mortality probability of males in either age group, but it is a significant and robust predictor of female mortality in the postneonatal period.

Recall and reliability of interview data from older women.

Retrospective fertility histories were collected from a purposive sample of 211 white, ever-married women, residing in four metropolitan areas of the USA and belonging to the birth cohorts of 1901-1910. At the time of interview, these women were aged 66 to 76. A random sample of 50 of the original respondents was reinterviewed by telephone on selected topics from the questionnaire. Responses to questions on dates and numbers of marriages, as well as births and other fertility events were coded to show whether the responses were exact, estimated by the respondent, or calculated by the editors. Respondents provided exact answers to an average of 90% of the questions they were asked. Reliability ratios, which were calculated for the above variables as well as ever-use of contraceptive methods, were comparable with those observed in previous studies of women in the childbearing years.