Fertility: Basic concepts and

measures
SOC 363 Demography and Population Dynamics

Week 5
 Language and Sources for Population Studies
Demographic variables: births, deaths, migration

1. Rates: report the frequency of an event during a given time period for a
specified population.

One advantage of rates is their values in comparing demographic phenomena

between populations of unequal absolute size.

If an entire population is used as a basis for the calculation, the result is a

crude rate.

If a selected group (e.g. women of reproductive age) is used, the result is a

specific rate.
 Language and Sources for Population Studies
Demographic variables: births, deaths, migration

2. Ratios: relate one population subgroup to another subgroup of the same

population (e.g. child-woman ratio).

3. Cohort measures: record events happening to a population of a unified type (

a number of people having a common characteristic) through a specific time
period.

Cohorts chosen for study often include those people born graduating, or married
at one particular time (e.g. in Turkey of the 35 – to 39-year-old women who first
married in 1951, 58% never bore children).
 Language and Sources for Population Studies
Demographic variables: births, deaths, migration

4. Constants: are used in calculations to produce results in easily understood

quantities.

5. Proportions: are expressions of the size of a subgroup as compared to an

entire population

6. Cohort: record of events happening to a population of a unified type through a

specific time period.
Fertility, measures, trends, and
determinants

➢ Fertility ➢ CBR
➢ Fecundity ➢ GFR
➢ Reproductive ➢ ASFR
period ➢ TFR
➢ Livebirth ➢ GRR
➢ Natural fertility ➢ NRR
➢ Period versus cohort ➢ C/W Ratio
fertility
 FERTILITY / FECUNDITY
➢Fertility refers to the number of live children
born to women. Fertility describes
reproductive performance. (i.e. the actual
birth of children)
➢Fecundity refers to the physical capacity to
reproduce
(i.e. biological potential for childbearing)
Infertile, childless
Infecund, sterile
 Fertility vs Fecundity

Fertility = actual bearing / number of children born to women

Fecundity = capacity to bear children - (the physical ability to reproduce)

Biological determinants of fertility- max. level of reproduction (uncontrolled)

16 births/woman
 Fertility vs Fecundity

The difference between the potential growth (fecundity) and the actual growth of
a population (fertility) is called environmental resistance (finding no mate;
premature death, etc.)

Involuntary resistance (health)

Voluntary resistance (control techniques)
Live birth:
Live birth means the complete expulsion or
extraction from its mother of a product of human
conception, irrespective of the duration of
pregnancy, which, after such expulsion or
extraction, breathes, or shows any other evidence
of life such as beating of the heart, or definite
movement of voluntary muscles etc. (WHO)

Live births are counted as birth events, e.g. A twin

or triplet live birth is counted as one birth event.
 INFECUNDITY, STERILITY

➢Couples who have tried unsuccessfully for at

least 12 months to conceive a child are
usually called infertile by physicians (infecund
by demographers)

➢Impaired fecundity, measured by women’s

responses to survey questions
A woman is classified as having impaired
fecundity (i.e. sterile) if...
➢she believes that it is impossible for her
to have a baby
➢a pyhsician has told her not to become
pregnant because the pregnancy would
pose a health risk for her or her baby
➢she has been continuously married for
at least 36 months, has not used
contraception, and yet has not gotten
pregnant
 Reproductive period
Menarche → Menopause

[The onset of menstruation →The end of menstruation]

• Ages 15 – 49

• 35 years
Natural fertility

➢is the level of reproduction that exists

in the absence of deliberate birth
control
➢Results when couples do not attempt
to terminate childbearing before the
end of their biological reproductive
span
➢A potential total of 15 children per
woman
 Hutterites
• the most famous high fertility group (a natural experiment)
• live in North and South Dakota, Montana, and Canada in the
1950s
• Strict religious norms prohibiting contraceptive use
• an average family size of 10.9 children
(9.2 for all women, 12.4 for married women)

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 Characteristics of Hutterite
fertility
• “be fruitful and multiply”
• early age at marriage
• good diet
• good medical care
• any form of birth control is a sin
• no contraception, no abortion
• colony branches off to form a new group
• opposed to childhood baptism

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Problems in Measuring Fertility

➢Difficulty in live birth definition

➢A woman may have a number of births
➢Population exposed to the risk of
childbearing is not ordinarily decreased by
having a birth
➢Fertility involves two parents
➢Not every women is truly exposed to the
risk of childbearing
Child-Woman Ratio
• It is used to measure the incidence of
childbearing in the population of adult women.
• Specifically, it is the number of children under 5
years of age per 1000 women of childbearing
age.

𝑃0−4
𝐶𝑊𝑅 = 𝑊 ∗ 1000
𝑃15−49

12
 Child-Woman Ratio

“the number of children under 5 for every 1000 women of childbearing age”

There are some variations in both procedure and terminology. Sometimes 15

–45 years are used as denominator. Sometimes the constant is 100.
Sometimes it is called the ratio of children to women or the general fertility
ratio (most common is child-woman ratio). It is affected by deaths of children
under 5 years old (during the five years just before the census).
 Children ever born

The number of births born in a specific year divided by female population age 15 and older:
Births
Pf15+

No information about current fertility/ we do not know when each child was born).

The data of children ever born provide us with information on the extent of childlessness
in a population as well as on the distribution of mothers by number of children.
 Marital fertility rate

A common practice is to calculate the

Marital Fertility Rate (children born for every thousand women who were ever
married)
Births xk
mf15
 Cumulative fertility rate

Cumulative Fertility Rate: when 5 – year- interval age-specific birth rates are
multiplied by 5 and added cumulatively.
Crude Birth Rate (CBR)
The CBR is a crude measure of fertility based on the number of births
divided by the total population in a given year.

𝒃
𝑪𝑩𝑹 = ∗ 𝟏𝟎𝟎𝟎
𝑷
World 16
More developed 9
Less developed 18
Highest CBR, Central African
44
Republic
Lowest CBR, South Korea 5
Türkiye 11
Source: 2024, World Population Data Sheet, PRB
 General Fertility Rate (GFR)

The purpose is to restrict the denominator to

potential mothers.

𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐭

𝐆𝐅𝐑 =
𝐌𝐢𝐝 − 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐩𝐨𝐩𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐩𝐬 𝟏𝟓 − 𝟒𝟗 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐭

𝑏
𝐺𝐹𝑅 = 𝑊 ∗ 1000
𝑃15−49
 Age-Specific Fertility Rate (ASFR)
𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐩 (𝐱, 𝐱 + 𝐧)
𝐀𝐒𝐅𝐑 𝐱, 𝐱 + 𝐧 = ∗ 𝟏𝟎𝟎𝟎
𝐌𝐢𝐝 − 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐩𝐨𝐩𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐩 (𝐱, 𝐱 + 𝐧)

Single age notation:

𝑏𝑥
𝐴𝑆𝐹𝑅 = 𝑓𝑥 =
𝑊𝑥
Total Fertility Rate (TFR)
Estimates the total number of live births a
woman would have if (i) they all lived
through their entire reproductive period
and (ii) were subject to a given set of age-
specific fertility rates.

𝑇𝐹𝑅 = ෍ 𝐴𝑆𝐹𝑅𝑥

45−49

𝑇𝐹𝑅 = 5 ∗ ෍ 𝐴𝑆𝐹𝑅𝑖
𝑖=15−19
 Total Fertility Rate (TFR)

World 2.2
More developed 1.4
Less developed 2.3
Highest TFR, Central African
6.4
Republic
Lowest TFR, South Korea 0.7
Turkey 1.5
Source: 2024, World Population Data Sheet, PRB
 Fertility measures
Birth rosters = list of children to one woman. A roster may also include information
on the sex of each child, on whether it is living at home or elsewhere, on whether it is
dead, and on the woman’s date of marriage(s)

Child spacing = time between births

Parity = number of children previously born (NUMBER OF SIBLINGS)

Some of the measures depend on information about births which have been
registered. Others rely on census enumerations or counts
 Gross Reproduction Rate (GRR)

Standardized rate similar to TFR except that it

is the sum of age-specific rates that include
only female live births in the numerator.
 Net Reproduction Rate (NRR)
➢Estimates the average number of daughters who
will replace a cohort of 1000 female infants by the
time the cohort has been subjected to the risk of
mortality from ages 0 to 49 and the risks of live
births from ages 15-49
➢Takes into account the mortality of the women from
the time of their birth.
➢Provides an estimate of replacement in the
hypothetical cohort given mortality levels taken from
a current life table
 Net reproduction rate

The difference between the gross reproduction rate and the net reproduction rate
is the average number of additional baby girls each member of the cohort would
have had if no member of the cohort had died between birth and age 50.
Replacement level of fertility

• Level at which women, on the average, have

enough daughters to «replace» themselves in
the population.
• Must be above 2.0 (at least one son is born for
every daughter, and some potential mothers die
before they have had their children)
• 2.1 in MDRs and 2.3 in LDRs.
• Corresponds to NRR of «1»!
 “Declining or even replacement level
fertility does not spell an immediate end to
population growth"
➢The reason for this is population momentum. While
fertility rates per women decline, number of births
continue to grow because the numbers of new
mothers grow as an echo effect of past increase in
births.
➢Only after this echo effect works itself through a
population’s age structure does a population stop
growing.
➢In the meantime, a country with a large population
base will experience very large absolute population
increases despite declining birth rates
Period vs. Cohort fertility measures
Fertility may be also studied over time to give us measures revealing the number and spacing of births
to cohorts of women as they pass through the life cycle; this is known as cohort analysis. Here we
could take the cohort of women who began their childbearing years at age 15 in, say, year 1970. We
could then follow them each year through year 2005 when they were at the end of age 49 and had
completed their childbearing years in order to see how many babies they had produced.

In the cohort/generation method, one group “of women” with common characteristics (e.g. born in the
same year or married in the same year) is traced throughout their reproductive life span (age 15 to age
49), the performance each year is recorded, giving finally the total number of children born to the group.
In this way the “mean number of children ever born” or “the average completed family size” is
obtained.
 Period vs cohort fertility
Period fertility Cohort fertility
Relates to short intervals of time Relates to lifetime experience
Looks at births to women in all age groups Follows real women over their reproductive life-
times
Can produce very current estimates Estimates typically relate to an earlier period
Data can be collected in a single time period or Requires either longitudinal data or
in a cross-sectional survey. For recent retrospective questioning by means of a birth
childbearing (last 10 years) recall of dates of history from women aged 50+. In populations
birth is usually quite good not conversant with recording of dates the latter
may suffer from inaccuracies of age/date recall
for distant births
Summary measure is Total Fertility Rate (TFR) Summary measure is Completed Family Size
(CFS)
Refers to an artificial construct called a synthetic Reflects the lifetime behaviour and intentions of
cohort cohorts of real women
Hhighlights the yearly variations in fertility due Smooths out temporal variations in fertility,
to transient influences since real women may live through periods of
high and low fertility
Best way to study impact of crises and short Best way to study childhood influences on
term interventions childbearing outcomes
Source: UNFPA, PAPP101 - S04: Measuring fertility, retrieved from
[Link]
AGE COHORTS
Period (1925-2016) and cohort (1895-1974) fertility trends in Sweden

2.60
Period Total Fertility Rate
2.40

2.20

2.00
Completed
1.80 Cohort Fertility
(lagged by 30
1.60 yrs)

1.40

1.20

1.00
1925

1940

1965

1980

2005
1930
1935

1945
1950
1955
1960

1970
1975

1985
1990
1995
2000

2010
2015
Sources: Human Fertility Database, Statistics Sweden presented by Sobotka (2017) at 50th anniversary
of HUIPS
Period fertility measures provide partial and often
misleading understanding of fertility trends*

• Tempo effect has a strong negative influence on period fertility (e.g.,

Bongaarts and Feeney 1998; Sobotka 2004; Bongaarts and Sobotka
2012)

• Need to consider cohort indicators and alternative indicators of period

fertility (tempo-adjusted indicators, indicators based on duration since
last birth, etc.)
(Ní Bhrolcháin 2011; Sobotka and Lutz 2011)

*Sobotka (2017) at 50th anniversary of HUIPS

 Period TFR (1998 and 2008) and completed cohort TFR (1968) in
33 countries of Europe with population > 1 mill.*
25
Cohort TFR, BC 1968
Period TFR, 1998
Period TFR, 2008
20
....
Number of countries

15

10

0
Below 1.3 1.3-1.49 1.5-1.69 1.7-1.89 1.90+
Total fertility rate
*Sobotka (2017) at 50th anniversary of HUIPS