Fertility and economic activity of women in Guatemala city, 1964

Data from a five percent census sample reveal that in Guatemala City in 1964 economically active women, especially domestic servants, had lower cumulative fertility than inactive women, partly because larger proportions of them had never married and were childless. However, even among ever married mothers there was a substantial differential, which was not due to differences in age at first birth. With respect to all women, cross tabulation and regression analysis show that age, marital status and educational attainment were more strongly associated with fertility than was activity status, but the latter also had a significant net association. Selection for sterility was not likely. Being contrary to expectations expressed in the literature, the very low fertility of the domestics received further attention. Live-in domestics had considerably lower fertility than those who lived out, which was also the case in the United States in 1960. These data and other evidence strongly suggest that this differential is due to a widespread employer preference for single or childless women. The concept of role incompatibility is therefore inapplicable to domestic servants. These findings add to the considerable evidence showing lower fertility among economically active women in large urban places in Latin America.     

Sweden faces zero population growth

In this discussion of Sweden as it approaches zero population growth, focus is on the following: population growth in perspective, fertility trends (childbearing concentrated and cohort versus period fertility), marital status (non-marital cohabitation, out-of-wedlock births, and divorce), women's changing status (increasing education and increasing employment), constraints and supports for women's dual role (family allowances and housing), birth control (contraceptive methods and practice and abortion), mortality trends, changing age structure and the elderly (average population age and proportion of elderly and cost of elderly support), international migration (from emigration to immigration and demographic impact of immigration), immigration policy, recent population debate (immigration issues and facing zero population growth). Since 1900 the primary features of Sweden's demographic history are a continuing decline in the birth rate to very low levels -- relieved by some upward movement in the 1940s and 1960s -- and a marked shift in the migration balance from emigration to immigration. It is almost entirely because of immigration that Sweden's population growth rate has not yet turned negative. If Swedish women were to continue to bear children at the rate that all women in the reproductive ages actually did in 1978, each women would end up with an average well below the level necessary to exactly replace each adult in the population leaving migration out, an annual total fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman would have to be sustained for births and deaths to be in balance under the low mortality conditions prevaling in Sweden.     

The size and structure of residential families, Guatemala City, 1964

Abstract In a review of census data for the periods 1945-54 and 1955-63, Burch discloses an increasing tendency for average household sizes to cluster at five to six members for developing nations, compared to three to four for developed nations.(1) Also, among developing nations he finds less than 50% of the population living in households containing three to six persons. This apparently contradicts Levy's general rule which prompted his study, that 'for well over 50% of the members of ... all known societies in world history' actual family size and composition have varied much less than would be expected, given ideal rules of residence which can vary from the classical extended family of Asian renown and European history to the small 'isolated' nuclear family of the modernized West.(2).     

Postamenorrheic versus postpartum strategies of contraception

The postpartum strategy of inserting an intra-uterine device shortly after a birth essentially eliminates the risk of conceiving again before starting contraception but maximizes the overlap between wearing time and postpartum anovulation when protection is not needed. In contrast, the postamenorrheic strategy of delaying insertion until right after the woman’s first menses all but removes overlap with anovulation but allows a chance of conception before start of contraception because sometimes an ovulation precedes the first menstruation. In this paper some algebra is developed and utilized to see which of the two strategies delays the next conception longer. The postamenorrheic strategy is found to have a slight advantage over the postpartum approach for a wide range of fecundability levels, lengths of anovulation, and rates of continuation of IUD. However this slight advantage presupposes that insertions are taking place at the exact time prescribed. When a progressively larger factor of procrastination is introduced, the advantage rapidly passes from the postamenorrheic to the postpartum approach. An explanation for the differing sensitivity of the two insertion strategies with respect to procrastination is derived from the results of an earlier analysis.     

Fertility and development in Brazil

In the past, one of the concomitants of development has been a sustained reduction in fertility. As a result of this experience, demographers hypothesize that in a society in which fertility is lower in urban areas, among the upper socioeconomic status groups and the better-educated, fertility will decline to a moderate level as the country changes from a rural, agricultural socioeconomic structure, with low levels of living and education, to an urban, industrial structure, with rising levels of living and education.The data analyzed in this study indicate, however, that though substantial social and economic development (as measured by changes in industrial structure, per capita income, urbanization, and education) occurred in Brazil from at least 1920-40 to 1960, during which time fertility differentials of the kind indicated above existed, fertility has shown little or no tendency to decline. Between 1940 and 1960, in fact, the birth rate appears to have remained fairly constant around 43. With the death rate steadily dropping, the rate of natural increase and population growth (given a small net in-migration) has been accelerating. p ]From a theoretical point of view, these facts reinforce a growing realization, based on similar findings in some other developing countries, that the prevailing theoretical ideas concerning the relationship between development and fertility require modification, particularly in the direction of greater specificity. On the practical side, the question is raised whether Brazil's rate of economic development during the postwar period up to 1960 can be maintained, let alone increased, in the face of a population growth rate which will probably average 3.2-3.5 percent for the period 1960-70 and which, in the absence of a decline in fertility, is likely to accelerate further.