Worldwide fertility declines do not rely on stopping at ideal parities

Abstract

A key demographic hypothesis has been that fertility declines rely on stopping at target parities, but emerging evidence suggests that women frequently reduce fertility without specific numeric targets. To assess the relative importance of these two paths to fertility decline, we develop a novel mixture model to estimate: (1) the proportion of a sample that stopped at a target parity and (2) the mean completed fertility among those who did not. Applied to Demographic and Health Survey data from women (ages 45-49) in 84 low-and middle-income countries as well as U.S. census cohorts, this model shows considerable variation in the proportion stopping at specific parities (1%-84%). These estimates also suggest that declines in completed fertility are largely attributed to women who did not stop at target parities. This suggests that stopping at ideal parities may be less important than parityindependent decisions for a wide range of fertility transitions.

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