Sociology Final Exam: Fertility

Period Rates --> Proximate determinants of fertility

Period Rates

describes the average number of children born to a “synthetic cohort” or “hypothetical cohort” of women rather than a real birth cohort

What does a Period Rate measure

represents cross-section of the population at a specific year

Is a Period rate or Cohort Rate a more timely measure of fertility?

Period Rate because you do not need to wait for a cohort of women to reach the end of their childbearing years around 45-40.

Cohort Rates

Measures follow the reproductive behavior of women born in the same year

Fecundity

Is a biological, individual process

What are the characteristics of Fecundity?

• physiological ability of a person or couple to have a child

• females are ____ from menarche(age 12) to menopause(about age 50)

• Males are from puberty forward

Fertility

is a social, population process

What are the characteristics of Fertility?

• the social realization of the biological ability to have children

• many people have the ability to have children, but delay having children until they finish school or get married

Fertility is more complex at measuring than…

mortality

Why is Fertility more complex than measuring mortality?

• not everyone gives birth

• fertility is limited by a min & max age

• fertility is repeatable event, and plural births (twins/triplets) are possible

• fertility involves two individuals of the opposite gender

Crude Birth Rates

provides information on how population size is changing due to births

Why is Crude Birth Rates —> “CRUDE”

includes the entire population rather than those “at risk” of having children

What does Crude Birth Rate ignore?

age structure of the population

General Fertility Rate

the number of live births per 1,000 women of childbearing age (typically 15-44 years) given in a year

Reproduction Rates

the rate at which a generation of women are reproduced to the next generation of women

What does reproduction rates calculate

average number of daughters a woman can expect to have

Gross Reproduction Rate

average number of daughters a woman can expect to have, assuming birth rates remain constant and all women survive throughout childbearing years

If a Gross Reproduction Rate is >1.0…

next generation of women will be larger than current one

If a Gross Reproduction Rate is =1.0…

women will replace themsleves

If a Gross Reproduction Rate is <1.0…

next generation of women will be smaller than current one

Net Production Rate (NRR)

number of daughters that a woman can expect to bear, taking into account her risk of dying during her reproductive years

Age-specific fertility rates

the annual number of live births to women in a specific age group (like 20-24) per 1,000 women in that same age group

Total Fertility Rate

a key demographic measure showing the average number of children a hypothetical woman would have in her lifetime if she experienced current age-specific birth rates throughout her childbearing years (typically ages 15-49), expressed as children per woman.

Theories of why fertility declined

• Mortality decline = fertility decline

• Intergenerational wealth flow

• Children have become more expensive

• Social contact and diffusion

Mortality decline = fertility decline

children are more likely to survive to adulthood

International Wealth Flow: Pre-Transition

wealth flows form children to parents (free labor, financial support in old age)

International Wealth Flow: Post-Transition

wealth flows from parents to children (education)

Social Contact & Diffusion

once a region in a country has begun a decline, neighboring regions with the same language or culture follow (even if less developed)

Proximate determinants of fertility

1. Proportion Married

2. Contraceptive Use

3. Level of induced abortion

4. Infecundity during breastfeeding

Proportion Married

• household with both mother and father

• mother well-educated

• later age at marriage

Infecundity during breastfeeding

prolongs postpartum amenorrhea and suppressed ovulation