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In this paper a theory of marital fertility transition that treats birth control diffusion processes and the effects of mortality decline and economic and social development on fertility within a common analytical framework is developed. Utility-cost concepts provide the means for an integrated treatment. Family size utility functions are used and the theory is focused on the effects of development and diffusion on the utilities and costs of alternative family sizes. The principal innovation lies in the conceptualization and analysis of diffusion of birth control, in which the psychic costs of violating social norms against birth control play a central role. When norms shift in favour of birth control, the psychic costs of birth control fall, causing a decline in the demand for children. In highly integrated populations this process can occur very rapidly, resulting in rapid diffusion of birth control and sudden and rapid fertility decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relation between fertility and mortality, especially child mortality, has long occupied demographers, both in historical studies of the demographic transition and in contemporary research in countries whose fertility and mortality have only recently started to decline. These volitional responses to child mortality are difficult to isolate from physiological factors that operate to the same effect. It has often been observed that a new birth occurs sooner when the previous child has died than when it survives, and this can come about in two quite distinct but mechanistic ways. In an earlier paper the sociologists analysed the breast-feeding patterns of a group of mothers in Central Java, using data obtained in a two-year prospective study. In this paper they return to the same group of women and look at the effects of selected maternal characteristics on child mortality, and of these characteristics in combination with child death on closure of the birth intervals. The co-variates tested in the analysis of child mortality were used also in regressions on the time to the next birth. The latter analysis also included an ancillary variable defined on child death on the assumption that the death of a child would hasten the next birth. If a woman were already pregnant when her child died, however, this hypothesis is gratuitous, and the ancillary variable was defined, therefore, only on the deaths of the children of demonstrably non-pregnant women.

This paper focuses on population dynamics which is based on birth intervals and parity progression. The parity progression model developed in this paper enables you to calculate the future population that will result from the operation of a given set of parity progression ratios and birth-interval distributions on an initial series of births distributed by order, just as the conventional method of population projection allows you to calculate the future population that will result from the operation of given age-schedules of fertility and mortality on an initial age distribution. The parity progression model embodies an approach to the measurement of fertility which is based on parity progression schedules, just as Lotka's model is based on age-specific birth rates. Parity progression schedules which incorporate parity progression rates and birth-interval distributions are arguably the most natural approach to the measurement of fertility. When people think about having children, they think in terms of whether or not and when to have a first or a subsequent birth.

This paper compares the performance of three methods applicable to national-level demographic data of estimating births averted as a consequence of contraceptive practice. Two are based on the relationship between the general fertility rate (GFR) or total fertility (TFR) and contraceptive prevalence, while the third uses Bongaarts' proximate determinants (PD) model. Estimates of the number of births averted and the percentage by which the number would have increased in the absence of contraception are consistent between the GFR-based and TFR-based methods, but in general lower than the estimates generated by the PD-based method, except for a few high-contraceptive-prevalence countries. For 156 countries and areas around the world the estimated number of births that would have occurred in a recent year in the absence of contraception—the average of the estimates of the three methods—is approximately 230 million, which is more than the estimated 129 million births that actually occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inadequate data and apartheid policies have meant that, until recently, most demographers have not had the opportunity to investigate the level of, and trend in, the fertility of South African women. The 1996 South Africa Census and the 1998 Demographic and Health Survey provide the first widely available and nationally representative demographic data on South Africa since 1970. Using these data, this paper describes the South African fertility decline from 1955 to 1996. Having identified and adjusted for several errors in the 1996 Census data, the paper argues that total fertility at that time was 3.2 children per woman nationally, and 3.5 children per woman for African South Africans. These levels are lower than in any other sub-Saharan African country. We show also that fertility in South Africa has been falling since the 1960s. Thus, fertility transition predates the establishment of a family planning programme in the country in 1974. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it has been often suggested, most notably by Caldwell, that high fertility in developing countries is motivated by the positive economic returns that children contribute to their parents, empirical evidence to support the hypothesis is limited. This paper describes a method of measuring the economic returns from the average child over the entire parental life-cycle. The method is then applied to detailed household economic data from Côte d'Ivoire. The results indicate that parents give more to their children than they receive and that the economic returns from children are negative. Overall, we estimate that the average child provides an annual rate of return of roughly -- 8 per cent, Our results shed light on how the returns from childbearing vary according to the age of the parents at time of birth. The results also offer a potential economic explanation of why older couples are often first to adopt modern contraception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a promising start some three decades ago, the application of micro-economic analysis to fertility studies has proved disappointing. It has not led to an increased understanding of fertility decisions nor to the policy insights which had been expected. This paper considers the reasons for this disappointment. It reviews briefly the development of the now dominant version of the economic approach to fertility analysis, the so-called "Chicago Model". It concludes that several basic conceptual and theoretical weaknesses of this approach have led it up a blind alley. The paper concludes with suggestions for new assumptions and approaches which may make the theory more relevant for policy programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With more than 22 million inhabitants, Uzbekistan is the most populous of the Central Asian republics of the former USSR. Using data from a retrospective survey conducted in 1992 among women of reproductive age, the paper examines fertility trends and determinants during the twentieth century. The analysis shows that the absence of a government-supported birth control programme and the strong pro-natalist policies of the Soviet authorities during most of the century did not affect either the onset, nor the progress of the fertility transition. The results indicate, however, that the social development programmes undertaken by the Soviet government did play a very active part in the transition as shown by the impact of education on reproductive behaviour, as well as on the very specific contraceptive mix adopted by the population after the mid- 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents detailed evidence on fertility levels and trends in China from a survey conducted in 1992 by the State Family Planning Commission. The evidence is analyzed internally and by comparison with evidence from the Census of Population of 1990 and from two previous surveys. The results of the 1992 survey, which indicated fertility levels far below replacement during the early 1990s, have been greeted with considerable scepticism. Close attention has therefore been paid to evidence and argument bearing on the completeness of reporting of births in the survey. While the survey data probably understate fertility levels after 1990, the results for 1990 and before appear to be generally reliable. Even allowing for substantial underreporting of births during 1991-92, it appears likely that Chinese fertility did, in fact, fall to replacement level during the early 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses recent arguments that sustained fertility decline cannot occur in circumstances of inequality, insecurity, and injustice. Naturally, these conditions are to be abhorred. However, the empirical record suggests that none of them acts as an absolute barrier to mass adoption of birth control and subsequent fertility decline. Recent trends in Bangladesh illustrate this point most vividly. One of the greatest fallacies of many fertility theories has been the assumption that there is an economic or social imperative in underdeveloped countries for couples to have many children. To the contrary, the historic norm for all societies has been an average of only about two surviving children per woman, implying an adaptation to low, not high, net fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Easterlin's supply-demand framework for the determinants of fertility is widely accepted because it has brought conceptual clarity to the study of factors that underlie the childbearing process. This model has not, however, succeeded in quantifying the fertility determinants in a convenient and generally accepted manner. The variant of Easterlin's model presented in this paper aims to remove obstacles to empirical implementation. In addition to quantifying the supply and demand factors, a new variable, the degree of preference implementation, is introduced to measure the role of costs and benefits of fertility regulation. Applications of this alternative method, to data from surveys in 18 less developed countries indicate that recent declines in fertility have largely been due to reductions in the demand for births, and to increases in preference implementation. Changes in the supply of births appear to have played only a minor role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Page's model of marital fertility by age and duration is fitted by maximum likelihood techniques to data from 38 of the 41 developing countries that participated in the World Fertility Survey. The results indicate that the model does an excellent job of capturing variations in fertility patterns, with only two parameters. Moreover, national-level estimates of the parameter representing the degree of control of marital fertility correlate reasonably well with the proportion using contraception. On the other hand, estimates of the parameter representing the level of natural fertility correlate well with the duration of breastfeeding and with a measure of contraceptive use for spacing, but also show substantial regional variation. The paper closes with comments on several extensions and applications of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parity progression measures are uniquely suited to the study of fertility in China, because Chinese policies and programmes focus so closely on parity and birth order. In this paper we present period parity progression ratios for China and its urban and rural areas for the years 1955-81, using the birth history data from the one-per-thousand fertility survey of 1982. Our period parity progression ratios differ from those introduced by Henry in that they provide an overall level of fertility which may be compared with measures based on age-specific birth rates. We compare the two measures empirically for China, finding both similarities and divergences, and then analyse the relation between them. It is suggested that, where fertility is low and fluctuating, as in China, the parity-progression- based measures provide a substantially truer picture of fertility levels and trends than do age-based measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the widely held and influential view that the fertility transition is largely the consequence of changing parental demand for children brought about by changes in the economic costs and benefits entailed in childbearing. Using evidence from both historical and contemporary populations we argue that demand theories do not offer a plausible explanation of the fertility transition. Instead, we propose that ideational, rather than structural, economic change lies at the heart of the transition. In particular, we suggest that attitudes to birth control, broadly defined, play a crucial role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the question whether reproductive behaviour is consciously altered by the death of a child is answered by using World Fertility Survey data from Colombia, Costa Rica, and Korea. Alternative strategies are proposed by which women replace children who have died. They may choose to contracept for a shorter period following the death of a child, or they may cease using contraception. Each strategy is analysed separately for selected birth intervals and its effect estimated with loglinear techniques. It is found that the timing and nature of the response to child mortality appear to depend on the stage reached in a country's fertility transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Consistency between fertility attitudes and behaviour has been a controversial and yet a central issue among the students of fertility behaviour. Based upon the critiques of past studies and analyses of survey data from Venezuela. this paper presents an analytical model for testing the consistency between fertility attitudes and behaviour. Six categories of independent variables included in this model are: socio-economic and demographic: fertility norms; contraceptive attitudes; social support; subjective accessibility: and personal aspirations. Social support. specific contraceptive attitudes, and subjective accessibility are the three best predictors of ever use and current use of family planning; these three measures account for over 90 per cent of the total variance of family planning explained by all independent variables combined. Among those with high scores on all these three measures, the contraception rate is about 90 per cent: conversely when all three are low, the contraception rate is low (18 per cent). When only one of the three measures is high. the rate is considerably lower than when all three are high: with attitude alone high. the contraception rate is about 46 per cent. Thus. favourable attitudes alone are not a sufficient condition for use of contraception. While specific attitudes and action intentions are good predictors of contraception, general attitudes and fertility norms fail to predict this behaviour. The lower predictive power of socio-economic variables and personal aspirations are probably due to the homogeneous social status of the population studied. The proposed model holds that, within a population with homogeneous socio-economic, demographic and fecundity status, family planning is a function of the additive influence of specific contraceptive attitudes, perceived social support for contraception, and subjective accessibility of the means for contraception. Finally, while a longitudinal study design is generally considered most appropriate for testing the consistency between attitude and behaviour, the results of this study indicate that with an appropriate design and analysis, survey data can also be effective in testing this consistency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a number of countries with national family planning programs demographic objectives have been set, designed to reduce crude birth or growth rates within designated intervals by specified amounts. Such objectives pose the problem of determining the annual numbers of acceptors of contraception required to achieve them. Component projection schemes specially elaborated to include assumptions about acceptance, effectiveness, and continuation of contraception are frequently used in this task. The assumptions about continuation turn out to be a crucial component of these calculations. For instance, doubling the expected length of use of methods is likely nearly to halve the number of acceptors inferred as necessary. It is the purpose of this paper to carry out a systematic comparison of the modified exponential and the Type III-exponential functions together with two new ones, the Type I-geometric and the modified Type I-geometric. Parameters are estimated by maximum likelihood. Comparisons are made on the basis of data from the IUD follow-up study with an effective observation period of eight years. This unusual length permits one to perform the experiment of pretending that observation is only one, two, or five years long and then to compare the results based on these varyingly abbreviated exposure spans with those based on the full observation period.

In this article it is shown that the extremely low fertility rates reported in China - well below replacement level - derived from the Chinese Survey in 1992 are false. Serious under-reporting of most recent births in China was caused by various factors, among them high pressure on officials to achieve the birth control targets set, the design of the questionnaire, and the employment of family planning workers as enumerators. The most likely value of total fertility in 1991-92 was at or slightly below replacement level, i.e. between 2.1 and 2.2 children per woman. Even after adjustment for serious under- reporting, marital fertility fell substantially between 1990 and 1992, mainly as a consequence of tighter implementation of the strict family planning programme. Rapid economic development also contributed to the fall, as many young people in the country left farming to engage in non-agricultural activities locally, or migrated to urban areas, particularly in the southern part of the country, where economic boom conditions may also have contributed to reduced or delayed fertility. In conclusion, some suggestions for future research on population policy and its implementation in China are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from the 1911 Census of England and Wales are examined for evidence of family limitation early in marriage. It is shown that a substantial number of couples used birth control for 'spacing' as welt as for 'stopping fertility. Moreover 'spacing' of births appears to have been more widespread in districts in which women's employment opportunities were relatively good. In general, the results obtained do not fit with the Princeton view of the European fertility transition with its stress on parity-specific family limitation spreading in response to improvements in contraceptive information and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on local area variations in reproductive behaviour in China. China's spectacular fertility decline has been documented at the national and provincial levels, as has its unique and effective family planning programme. The 1982 One-per-Thousand Fertility Survey provides an opportunity for the study of reproductive behaviour in local communities. Education is the one independent socio-economic variable available in the survey. Initial analyses of the survey at the national level by Chinese researchers were based mainly on manual tabulations of the data. Production brigades and urban neighbourhoods are meaningful units of social and political organization for many aspects of the lives of married couples in China. They are likely to reflect distinctive levels of living, resources, and the functioning of political and economic policy at the local level. China has a strong central government which operates through interlocking parallel lines of bureaucratic and political control at successive levels down to the local units. However, the final effects of central policies are neither uniform nor monolithic. Responses at the local level are necessarily affected by local conditions.

Between 1980 and 2000 total fertility in Kenya fell by about 40 per cent, from some eight births per woman to around five. During the same period, fertility in Uganda declined by less than 10 per cent. An analysis of the proximate determinants shows that the difference was due primarily to greater contraceptive use in Kenya, though in Uganda there was also a reduction in pathological sterility. The Demographic and Health Surveys show that women in Kenya wanted fewer children than those in Uganda, but that in Uganda there was also a greater unmet need for contraception. We suggest that these differences may be attributed, in part at least, first, to the divergent paths of economic development followed by the two countries after Independence; and, second, to the Kenya Government's active promotion of family planning through the health services, which the Uganda Government did not promote until 1995. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use data from the nationally representative 1997 Demographic and Reproductive Health Survey to examine use of maternity services in rural China. The data indicate that roughly 60 per cent of women had at least one prenatal visit, while 40 per cent had a professionally assisted birth over the period 1 988-97. Despite China's shift from a more socialist to a more privatized health care system, use of maternity services increased over this period. These increases are consistent with the push toward integration of reproductive health into family planning that emerged after the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development and the 1995 Fourth World Women's Conference held in Beijing. At the same time, we find indirect evidence that the target-based population policy may well have exerted downward pressure on use of maternity services; differences by parity are marked and multilevel models predicting use of maternity services indicate underdispersion at the individual level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A persistent theme in much anthropological writing is the concept of the deliberate control of population numbers by hunter-gatherers as a means of achieving moderate family size, adequate nutrition, and constrained adult mortality. An analysis of the mix of theory and field evidence that led to this conclusion finds the case not proven. On the contrary, Malthusian constraints can operate, and probably did operate, to produce a hunter-gatherer society where most adults were reasonably robust and healthy even though child mortality was high and life expectancy short. The absence of population limitation in pre-Neolithic times implies high mortality as well as high fertility, and weakens the argument positing a Neolithic mortality crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While women's education continues to be strongly associated with lower fertility in India, an important feature of India's current fertility transition is the spread of contraceptive use among uneducated women. Indeed, changes in their fertility are now making the major contribution to the country's overall fertility decline. We use multilevel statistical procedures to investigate the variation in contraceptive use among uneducated women across India. The analysis suggests that, while many of the expected socio-economic variables play their part, there are also considerable diffusion effects in progress, many of which operate at levels beyond the uneducated women's own individual circumstances. For example, we find significant relationships with others' use of contraception and others' education. Mass media exposure also emerges as an important diffusion channel The multilevel analysis also reveals significant clustering of contraceptive use at different levels, much of which is accounted for by the variables included in the models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we use a simple mathematical model to study the implications for fertility transition of the diffusion of birth-control practices through social interaction. The model proposed is dynamic and deterministic. The simulations demonstrate that interaction diffusion can make potentially large contributions to fertility declines. These contributions tend to be larger under more restrictive demand and supply conditions and, not surprisingly, in populations characterized by higher levels of social interaction about reproduction. Moreover, if social interaction is intense enough, fertility differentials fade away and fertility change resembles an imitation process. A direct implication of the model, clearly illustrated by the simulations, is that reduction in birth-control costs can stimulate greater demand for birth control. The simulations also illustrate the effects of geographical and social distances on fertility differentials, the pace of fertility transition, and the timing of the onset of transition. The strength of social-interaction diffusion is heavily conditioned by two sets of factors, which thus assume great significance as determinants of the course of fertility transition: the development of communication and transport networks, and the patterns of customary social interaction permitted by the social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the impact of the proximate determinants of fertility. The search for an understanding of the variation in fertility has focused attention on the proximate determinants of fertility, those biological and behavioural factors which directly influence fertility. In contracepting populations, marital fertility has dropped below replacement level in several European countries, with women averaging fewer than 2.1 children over their lifetimes. The aim of constructing such a framework was to make it possible to gauge the impact of cultural factors on fertility, and thereby increase our powers of explanation. Since any influence on fertility can occur only by manipulating these factors, researchers gauge the impact of cultural factors by specifying how they affect these proximate determinants, and how the determinants, in turn, affect fertility. It is the fertility-inhibiting effects of non-marriage, contraceptive use, induced abortion and lactational infecundity which prevent any population from realizing its maximum possible fecundity.

This report describes a study of the fertility experience of an Amazon Indian tribe that has shown evidence of having the highest documented fertility of any human group. The Shipibo, who live in the upper Peruvian Amazon, are experiencing rapid cultural change, including a decline in the prevalence of polygyny. This study tests the specific hypotheses that polygyny limits individual female and community fertility through the mechanism of post partum sexual abstinence and longer birth intervals. Total population counts in eight villages and reproductive histories of all females age 13 + show that mean birth interval lengths of polygynous women are four months longer than those of monogamous women. Fertility of polygynous women was lower, with 1.3 fewer term-births per reproductive span than that of monogamous women. The community general fertility rate is negatively associated with the proportion of polygynous birth intervals in the community. In this study, cultural change is strongly associated with higher fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on empirical evidence and model-building results that are available in the biological or demographic literature. The fecundability in the four most recent models agree reasonably well for low and intermediate coital frequencies, but diverge progressively at higher frequencies. The purpose of this article is to review these and previous models. They imply relatively smaller gains in fecundability than other models when daily intercourse replaces intercourse every other day. However, other work suggests that coital frequency may affect the probabilities of fertilization and impregnation by affecting the chances that conception results from either an older sperm or an overripe ovum. More specifically, more frequent intercourse lowers the risk of early abortion by increasing the chance that fertilization was achieved by a fresh gamete and thus increases the chance of impregnation and perhaps also the conditional probability of fertilization, given coitus within the fertile period. The bulk of confirmatory evidence applies to non-human mammals. The purpose of this article is to review this evidence and explore its implications by means of a new set of models of the fertile period.

This article focuses on the perspective on family and fertility in developing countries. It is in transitional society where rapid change in way of life towards that followed by people in lands with a modern economy is occurring, that the supports for unlimited fertility finally crumble. The example of transitional society in Nigeria is the urban middle class of its second largest city, Ibadan. High fertility remains a rational proposition for the great majority in Ibadan. The situation there is described as one in which rapid upward mobility through education and jobs in the modern sector is possible, and where mobility, far from being inconsistent with high fertility, is enhanced by it. The returns to parents from children's education are high, and both the maintenance of a system of mutual obligations among kin and high fertility increase the probability of higher returns. From an examination of the characteristics of innovators who practice birth control. It is concluded that they are parents who have received more modern education, who work in non-manual occupations, and whose own parents worked in white collar modern occupations.

Clear and decisive declines in fertility in several Latin American and Caribbean countries may be signaling changes in long-standing fertility patterns in the region. The role of social and economic development in this decline is not clear and is further complicated by the emergence of organized family-planning programmes. Though in most of the countries in which falls began earliest birth control programmes also began early, in three of the five instances these programmes were initiated only after the declines had started. A case study of Costa Rica leads to the conclusion that fertility decline there was preceded by marked increases in the proportion of young people completing primary school; that the change was initiated by young married couples living in cantons in which literacy was high and agriculture was declining, and that after the national family-planning programmes had been introduced, fertility also tended to fall in regions of comparatively low literacy and little agricultural change. Thus, the national programmes may have accelerated the decline by bringing it to geographical areas and individuals on the fringes of development. The entire process was probably facilitated by certain cultural factors: Costa Rica's more liberal legislation with respect to the commercial distribution of contraceptives, and the greater freedom of Costa Rican women to communicate with their husbands about contraception. The most recent fertility declines, in Colombia, and probably in Mexico, underscore the important role of organized family-planning programmes.

The article reasons for small family size in the Island of Pantelleria, Italy. Pantelleria is a small volcanic island measuring roughly 14 by 8 kilometers which lies half way between the western tip of Sicily and Cape Bon on the Tunisian coast. Pantellieria is an agricultural island instead of fishing and merchant shipping has historically provided the economic basis of society. On the island, there are three large population centers and a few scattered hamlets. Two of the centers, Khamma and Scauri, are largely rural; the other, Pantelleria, is the island's relatively urban port. The population of the village of Khamma, was used to draw a pilot survey sample. Adaptation and adjustment to changing environmental factors provide the theoretical moving force of the cultural ecological model. In the sample collected during the summer of 1974 the mean number of children were born to or adopted by the 122 women over 40 years of age was 2.43 with a standard deviation of 1.80, and a mode of two. Small family size is accomplished largely through abstinence. According to local doctors and pharmacists, there has been some adoption of birth-control pills since about 1970.

This article presents an analysis of the timing and spacing of pregnancies and family-building in a Canadian City. Conjugal and maternity histories collected in an Ottawa Survey permit a cohort analysis of fertility change through an examination of pregnancy intervals. The article discusses the use of life-table techniques to overcome specified censoring biases. Inter-generational changes in fertility behavior are identified and differences at higher parities, and between the youngest and other cohorts at parity zero are noted. Finally, a relationship is established between the order of a birth interval and its duration. The importance of fertility as a key component of future population trends in the industrialized nations has been noted by Glass, among others. In these countries a variety of routes have been followed to current low fertility levels. The post-war baby boom has been followed in the past decade or so by a dramatic and continuing decline, as a result of a reduction in ultimate family size and changes in the timing and spacing of pregnancies and births. A number of components have contributed to these latter changes: the proportion of the population who marry and the ages at which marriages occur; the interval between marriage and first birth; and between subsequent births; and finally the conditional probabilities of these transitions. Thus, the baby boom was partly achieved by extremely high probabilities of progression to second birth from marriage. However, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a decrease in the conditional probability of having another child for those (mothers) arriving at parities three and higher.

Evidence from the analysis of reconstituted family histories of couples married before 1850 based on ten village genealogies suggests that family limitation was largely absent in pre-industrial German village populations. By and large, marital fertility schedules of this pre-industrial period conform to the age pattern of natural fertility. Women bore their last child at relatively high ages and apparently were not influenced by previous experience with infant and child mortality. These findings seem to hold over a substantial period and across villages in very different areas of Germany. A positive association between age at marriage and marital fertility at a given age was evident, but in most cases all or a substantial proportion of this relationship could be attributed to several plausible mechanisms other than deliberate attempts to limit family size. In addition, the age at last birth appeared to be unrelated to age at marriage. The results cast doubt on assertions that birth control was widely practised in the pre-industrial period. If any birth control had been practised within marriage in pre-industrial German villages, it was apparently not parity-dependent and thus differed fundamentally from the form of control involved in the modern fertility transition.

The impact of the Malaysian National Family Planning Programme on the birth rate has been estimated by comparing the fertility of a large sample of programme acceptors with that of a matched comparison group of non-acceptors. This method involved use of national identity card numbers to link family planning acceptor and birth registration records. The two groups were matched on the five key variables of month and year of most recent delivery, birth order, and age, race and duration of the mother's marriage. The principal finding is that birth rates among programme acceptors are significantly lower in all six post-acceptance years than in the matched comparison group, and that they altogether experienced 425 fewer births per thousand women than non-acceptors during this period. Results are examined separately for different age, race, parity and marriage duration groups, as well as by year of acceptance, sex of the most recent child, and method adopted. Comparison of this method with a less direct procedure previously employed in Malaysia shows reasonable agreement on the estimated impact of fertility. It is concluded that the national programme has contributed significantly to observed national birth rate reductions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]