The negligible influence of premarital cohabitation on marital fertility in current danish cohorts, 1975

This paper studies the influence of premarital cohabitation on marital fertility by applying life table methods to data for cohorts of Danish women born in 1926–1955, collected in retrospective interviews made in 1975. For each five-year cohort, the data have been analyzed by duration of marriage or by duration since previous birth, for women who had no reported births before marriage. Our main empirical results are: (a) that women who married at age 15–19 had higher rates of marital first and second births than those married at ages 20–24, and (b) that premarital cohabitation had very little influence on births of these two first orders in our data.     

A specification of marital fertility by parents’ age,age atmarriage and marital duration

The positive association between wife's age at marriage and fertility experienced at the older reproductive ages, cited in recent natural fertility literature, is explored using Mormon birth cohorts from 1840 to 1879. When this relationship is specified by husband's age at marriage and marriage duration, the results indicate that older-aged husbands depress marital fertility only at higher marriage durations. The general decomposition of age-specific fertility utilizing both mother's and father's age is also considered. The results show that mother's aging is the most important factor, while father's aging has a moderately negative effect under a natural fertility regime.     

Childbearing within Marriage and Consensual Union in Latin America, 1980–2010

This article compares the fertility patterns of women in consensual union and marriage in 13 Latin American countries, using census microdata from the four most recent census rounds and a methodological approach that combines the own‐children method and Poisson regression. Results show that in all these countries, fertility is slightly higher within consensual union than marriage and that the age pattern of fertility is very similar in marital and non‐marital unions. Further analyses show that over the period considered, childbearing within a consensual union has changed from rare to increasingly common, although not yet mainstream, for highly educated women in most countries examined. Results show that in Latin America, at least since the 1980s, women's childbearing patterns depend on their age and on their being in a conjugal relationship, but not on the legal nature of this relationship. The similarities in reproductive behavior between marital and non‐marital unions are not confined to the socially disadvantaged groups, but apply as well to the better off.     

Nuptiality and population growth

In the European historical experience, nuptiality patterns played a very significant role in the development of low fertility. Late marriage and widespread celibacy provided one of the mechanisms by which age-specific fertility rates were brought to low levels in the populations of Western Europe. In Eastern and Central Europe on the other hand, where marriage customarily occurred earlier and was more nearly universal, a somewhat slower fertility transition was achieved through a reduction in marital fertility — without any drastic accompanying nuptiality change. Populations of developing countries, however, commonly exhibit nuptiality patterns characterized by a still higher incidence and a considerably younger age-pattern of marriage than even the earliest observed schedule from Eastern Europe. With few exceptions, little work has been done to date to examine the implications of these very early and universal marriage schedules for fertility in general and for the growth of these populations in particular.¹ We have therefore tried to analyse the impact of nuptiality on the fertility and growth of a series of populations from developing nations where extra-marital fertility is negligible. Populations in which the prevalence of cohabitation by age is not well documented by existing marital-status data (mainly those in Latin America and tropical Africa) are excluded from this analysis; an attempt will be made in later work, however, to extend the analysis to these populations.     

On the pattern of cohort fertility

Abstract An examination of the patterns of cohort fertility rates in a number of populations revealed the existence of a common pattern showing how mean family sizes of the different age-at-marriage groups of a given marriage cohort are built up over the reproductive span. Standard schedules of fertility patterns are generated by the use of the Gompertz function which defines the distribution of cumulative fertility rates of a given marriage cohort by marriage duration by means of only three parameters. The generated system is tested with the historical series for England and Wales and Sweden and is found adequate to describe widely different childbearing patterns. Some of the demographic implications of the existence of common fertility patterns are examined and the usefulness of the generated system in projecting future fertility trends is briefly discussed.     

Nineteenth-Century fertility oscillations

Abstract A model of delayed response, developed within the frame of a general sociological analysis, is applied to oscillations in aggregate legitimate fertility, considered as delayed responses to variations in the marriage rate. The appropriate lag function is derived on the basis of an assumed fertility schedule by duration of marriage. It is shown that if oscillations were caused solely by marriage fluctuations they would be very smooth with an 'average period' of 25 years and upwards. In Swedish data from the period 1830-1879 this smooth pattern is discernible as one component, overlaid by short-term fluctuations for which some other cause must be found. After a discussion of alternative explanations it is submitted that the cause is the practice of birth control on a fairly extensive scale, long before the secular decline in marital fertility, a conclusion which ties in with the results of earlier analyses of nineteenth-century fertility.     

Reduction in fertility due to induced abortions: A simulation model

The impact of induced abortion on fertility under Indian conditions is studied in this paper. The model is executed on a computer. First, matrices of birth probabilities specific to age and age at marriage are obtained, with the help of a simulation model, under various assumptions regarding the incidence of induced abortion. Later, making use of these matrices, period fertility measures such as age specific marital fertility rates and crude birth rates are obtained for India for the period 1961-75. One of the findings is that the effect of induced abortion in reducing the birth rate of India will be greater if it is used as a supplement to various family planning methods.     

A simple measure of fertility control

We describe a simple measure of fertility control: the proportion of all births from the age-specific fertility schedule that occurs among women by age 35. This measure has broad applicability because it does not require information on marital fertility rates. When both the proportion of births by age 35 and the most commonly used measure of fertility control, m, are calculated for a population over time, they are correlated very highly. Because of increasing levels of nonmarital fertility in several developed countries, measures of fertility control that are based on marital fertility are less appropriate now than in the past.     

Interrelationships between fertility and marital dissolution: Results of a simultaneous logit model

Previous studies have failed to examine (a) the simultaneity of decisions to bear children and to dissolve a marriage and (b) the effects of the childbearing in the period just before dissolution on the likelihood of disruption. We attempted to resolve both problems by developing a simultaneous logit model of the interrelationship between the probability of separation and of having a birth during this period (when dissolution presumably is being considered). The model was estimated at successive durations of first marriage, using data for white women in the 1970 National Fertility Survey. The results indicate that childbearing patterns— number of children and age of youngest child at the beginning of the marital interval being studied and fertility during the interval—did not influence the likelihood of separation in simple or consistent ways over the marital life course, nor did marital strife (as indicated by separation) seem to affect childbearing throughout marriage.     

Relationships between nuptiality and fertility: a case study on the Spanish Province of Navarre, 1786-1991

In this article we analyse the influence of age at marriage and percentage of definitive celibacy on marital and total fertility over the past two hundred years in the Spanish province of Navarre. A considerable percentage of the fall in marital fertility in the first half of the twentieth century in rural Navarre was due to the postponement in women's age at marriage. On the other hand, Navarre offers many exceptions to the scenario often endorsed by researchers that sees marriage as the prime mechanism for regulating reproduction in traditional societies. While in the northern part of the province this mechanism did bring about the reduction of total fertility, in the southern part the fall was primarily a consequence of a fall in marital fertility.     

Marital Status and Reproductive Performance in Kipsigis Women: Re-evaluating the Polygyny-Fertility Hypothesis

The effects of marital status on fertility and offspring survivorship are examined with data on six marriage cohorts of Kipsigis women, agro-pastoralists of south western Kenya. Neither marriage order, nor the average number of co-wives married to a man during a woman's reproductive years, is associated with completed family size, nor with any of the components of reproductive performance. The mechanisms whereby polygyny might potentially lower the reproductive performance of polygynously married women in the Kipsigis and other populations are discussed in some detail, with particular reference to resource shortages, sexual and economic favouritism, the observance of post partum taboos, disease, husband's age, co-wife co-operation, education, sterility, and age at menarche and marriage.     

Does an effect of marriage duration on pre-transition fertility signal parity-dependent control? An empirical test in nineteenth-century Leuven,Belgium

It has been demonstrated for many pre-industrial populations that the age at marriage, or marriage duration, influences age-specific marital fertility but the reason for this remains unclear. Among the several mechanisms that may be responsible, the following are often cited: secondary sterility or increased subfecundity associated with parity; declining coital frequency; the age difference between the spouses; and, importantly, parity-dependent fertility control. If the latter mechanism were partly responsible for the marriage-duration effect in pre-transition populations, it would contradict the concept of the modern fertility transition as the evolution (or revolution) from parity-independent to parity-dependent fertility. The study presented in this paper investigates the relative importance of these alternative explanations. The application of multivariate Poisson regression to the fertility data from two birth cohorts in the Belgian city of Leuven shows that a linearly declining or even concave age-specific fertility pattern, disaggregated by age at marriage, does not imply parity-dependent fertility limitation.     

A comparison between current Indian fertility and late nineteenth-century Swedish and Finnish fertility

Abstract The paper aims to probe causes of the current high level of the crude birth rate in India. This is accomplished by comparing the current Indian fertility level with that of Sweden and Finland during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. By utilizing marital distribution, age distribution and age-specific marital fertility rates of the three countries, the basic demographic causes of high fertility in India can be established. In the second part, the factors causing age-specific marital fertility rates in India to be lower than nineteenth-century Sweden and Finland are discussed. This is done by comparing the levels of the followingsix variables, operating within marriage, between Indian and Scandinavian cultures: (1) Abstinence - voluntary and involuntary, (2) Frequency of coitus, (3) Incidence of sterility - primary and secondary, (4) Contraception and sterilization, (5) Incidence of foetal mortality and (6) Incidence of induced abortions.     

The effect of marital status at first birth on marital dissolution among adolescent mothers

The sequencing of marriage and first birth was expected to play an important role in the stability of marriage among adolescent mothers. We hypothesized that adolescent women who married prior to conception would have the lowest rates of marital disruption, followed by those who married between conception and birth. Adolescent women who gave birth prior to marriage were expected to suffer the highest rates of marital dissolution. The results provide partial support for our hypotheses. There is little difference in the probability of separation between adolescent mothers who had a postmarital conception and those who had a premarital conception but married before the birth. Having a premarital birth, however, significantly increases the probability of marital dissolution. We also hypothesized that marital status at first birth would have less effect on the probability of marital dissolution for blacks than for whites. This, too, is generally supported by our findings. Among black females, those with a premarital birth are the first to suffer a marital disruption, but by the end of ten years there is little difference in the probability of separation among the three marital status groups. In contrast, among white females, those with a premarital birth are the first to experience a disruption, and this differential persists over all subsequent marriage duration intervals. Thus, the sequencing of marriage relative to birth has similar short term effects for whites and blacks, but the effect for blacks is evident only in the short term. Ten years after the marriage, black adolescent mothers have similar rates of marital stability regardless of the sequencing of marriage. This is consistent with the findings of previous research and with our hypothesis; with the black family pattern of lower rates of marriage, higher rates of illegitimacy and higher divorce rates, the sequencing of marriage has no long lasting consequences on marital stability. Finally, our predicted decline in the effect of marital status at first birth over historical time also finds partial support. For white females there has been a change in the effect of marriage-first birth sequencing on separation over time. In the period encompassed by the women in our study, white adolescent mothers who married subsequent to the birth have been the most likely to experience a separation at all marriage duration intervals, but this differential narrows as age at interview declines. Among black females there has been no change in the effect of a premarital birth over time.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

Marital stability throughout the child-rearing years

Although there is evidence that the number and ages of children influence marital stability, studies have not systematically tracked the risk of marital disruption throughout the child-rearing years. This study uses marital and fertility histories from the June 1985 Current Population Survey to examine this issue. Continuous-time regression models with ages and numbers of children as time-varying covariates are estimated. Net of controls for age at marriage, year of marriage, education, and marital duration, stability increases with family size up to the third child but starts to decline as family size reaches five or more children. Aging of children is disruptive until the youngest child reaches adulthood, after which marriages become much more stable. Arrival and aging of children is an important dynamic with strong implications for marital stability.     

A joint model of marital childbearing and marital disruption

Married couples with children appear to be less likely to end their marriages than childless couples, especially when the children are young. Although this suggests that children affect the chances that their parents will divorce, the process may not be so simple: the chances that the marriage will last also may affect couples’ willingness to make the commitment to the marriage implied by having children. This paper uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to test the hypothesis that the risk of disruption faced by a married woman affects the chances that she will conceive and bear a child. The model used takes into account the simultaneous relationships between marital dissolution and marital fertility by including the hazard of disruption as a predictor of timing and likelihood of marital conception, and by including the results of previous fertility decisions as predictors of disruption of the marriage. We find that the hazard of disruption has strong negative effects on the hazard of marital childbearing, lengthening the intervals between births and decreasing the chances that a child will be born. This effect appears to be strongest for women who have had at least one child, either before or during the current marriage, although it is also large for childless women. Explicitly including the hazard of disruption in models of marital childbearing has sizable and important effects on many predictors of fertility.     

Multidimensional Life Table Estimation of the Total Fertility Rate and Its Components

Using discrete-time survival models of parity progression and illustrative data from the Philippines, this article develops a multivariate multidimensional life table of nuptiality and fertility, the dimensions of which are age, parity, and duration in parity. The measures calculated from this life table include total fertility rate (TRF), total marital fertility rate (TMFR), parity progression ratios (PPR), age-specific fertility rates, mean and median ages at first marriage, mean and median closed birth intervals, and mean and median ages at childbearing by child’s birth order and for all birth orders combined. These measures are referred to collectively as “TFR and its components.” Because the multidimensional life table is multivariate, all measures derived from it are also multivariate in the sense that they can be tabulated by categories or selected values of one socioeconomic variable while controlling for other socioeconomic variables. The methodology is applied to birth history data, in the form of actual birth histories from a fertility survey or reconstructed birth histories derived from a census or household survey. The methodology yields period estimates as well as cohort estimates of the aforementioned measures.     

Nuptiality and population growth

Abstract In the European historical experience, nuptiality patterns played a very significant role in the development of low fertility. Late marriage and widespread celibacy provided one of the mechanisms by which age-specific fertility rates were brought to low levels in the populations of Western Europe. In Eastern and Central Europe on the other hand, where marriage customarily occurred earlier and was more nearly universal, a somewhat slower fertility transition was achieved through a reduction in marital fertility - without any drastic accompanying nuptiality change. Populations of developing countries, however, commonly exhibit nuptiality patterns characterized by a still higher incidence and a considerably younger age-pattern of marriage than even the earliest observed schedule from Eastern Europe. With few exceptions, little work has been done to date to examine the implications of these very early and universal marriage schedules for fertility in general and for the growth of these populations in particular.(1) We have therefore tried to analyse the impact of nuptiality on the fertility and growth of a series of populations from developing nations where extra-marital fertility is negligible. Populations in which the prevalence of cohabitation by age is not well documented by existing marital-status data (mainly those in Latin America and tropical Africa) are excluded from this analysis; an attempt will be made in later work, however, to extend the analysis to these populations.     

A dynamic model of the reproductive process

Summary A dynamic deterministic model of the reproductive process is presented. The model describes and analyses the effect of intermediate fertility variables on fertility. The intermediate fertility variables which are the inputs to the model, include the duration of post-partum amenorrhea, fecundability, incidence of spontaneous and induced abortion, contraceptive use and effectiveness, the distribution of age at first marriage and the age specific risks of marital disruption and remarriage. To test the validity of this model, it is fitted to data obtained from reproductive histories of 512 marriages occurring during the first half of the eighteenth century in Canada.