Variations in historical natural fertility patterns and the measurement of fertility control

Abstract

This paper considers two main issues: the definition of Henry's concept of natural fertility, and the use of standard age-specific marital fertility schedules to measure the extent of fertility control. It suggests that regional as well as temporal variations are to be expected in the pattern of marital fertility and in consequence argues the need for a variety of standard marital fertility schedules specific to the underlying fertility conditions of the particular population under investigation. A detailed example drawn from the fertility patterns of Britain, Denmark and Sweden is presented.

Adapting the Own Children Method to allow comparison of fertility between populations with different marriage regimes

“…Instead, the Sprague osculatory interpolation was used to redistribute births to the correct age of mother. This procedure was also followed in some historical demography applications where small numbers of women may have made working with single-year rates more problematic (Haines 1978(Haines , 1979Woods and Smith 1983;Hinde and Woods 1984;Garrett et al 2001).…”

“…This carries the alternative assumption that all children living apart from their mothers are the result of unmarried motherhood, orphanhood, or abandonment. Those who follow this route generally consider only children under five years of age, as the assumption becomes less plausible at older ages (Woods and Smith 1983;Hinde and Woods 1984;Garrett et al 2001).…”

Nuptiality and Age At Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England

“…The influence of nuptiality levels on overall fertility is particularly strong, yet the late nineteenth-century fertility transition was the result of changes in marital fertility and to a far lesser extent illegitimacy. It was not until marital fertility was under effective &dquo;individual control&dquo; that the &dquo;social controls&dquo; on nuptiality were removed; this did not occur until the 1930s or later (Woods and Smith, 1983;Hinde and Woods, 1984).…”

“…Anderson (1976) used 623 units of which 37 were London registration districts. Woods (1984) provides a discussion of fertility and nuptiality in London, 1861-1891. 8 I m together with I f (overall fertility), I g (marital fertility), and I h (illegitimate fertility), are defined by Coale (1967). The amended age-specific marital fertility schedule used here as the standard for the five age groups for which data exist in nineteenthcentury England and Wales is as follows: 15-19, 0.300; 20-24, 0.550; 25-34, 0.475; 35-44, 0.317; 45-49, 0 The advantages and problems of using such schedules have already been dealt with in detail by the contributors to Wrigley (1972) and Lawton (1978), and will not be rehearsed again here.…”

Another Look at Coale’s Indices of Fertility, If and Ig

“…2 Because Coale's notion of fertility control was based entirely on stopping, he was thus completely focused on the end rather than the beginning of the childbearing period. Newer notions of fertility control that involve either the spacing of births throughout a woman's childbearing years (Ewbank 1993;Okun 1995) or regional versions of unrestrained, ''natural'' fertility (Hinde and Woods 1984) require attention to fertility at all ages. Whatever the case, Coale intentionally lowered the recorded marital fertility of 15-to 19-year-old Hutterite women by more than 50%.…”