Search

The article analysis short-run variations in marital fertility in Sweden during the period 1830-1879 in order to explore different models of fertility determination before the secular decline of fertility took place, and to use fertility data to demonstrate a method of studying sociological trends and oscillations. One of the main determinants of aggregate marital fertility, the total number of legitimate births or the legitimate birth rate, is the number of marriages, and fluctuations in that number. It will be shown that if this were the sole determinant the result would be a very high degree of smoothness in the response, fertility. Auto-correlations would be high, much higher than actually observed. So a simple inspection of the response series and the correlogram is sufficient to reject this explanation, even if there were no direct statistical information on the annual number of marriages. But as direct information on marriages is available, this may be used to compute the expected level of aggregate marital fertility assuming a constant fertility schedule by duration of marriage. This turns out to follow the smooth pattern predicted, whilst observed fertility shows much more pronounced short-term variations.

The present article reviews a previous investigation relating to a small Swedish isolate in Estonia. A brief description is given of ways of obtaining data on fertility and sterility, etc., from parish registrations. The period observed is 1840-1900 when no family limitation seems to have existed. The frequency of sterility is studied, by observing the time when the last child of the marriage was born. A decrement table is derived from the frequencies of last births, and from this the mean expectation of the fertile period may be calculated. Duration of marriage at the last birth is used for calculating fecundity rates by modifying a method previously given by S. G. W. Wahlund. Intervals between successive births are discussed. Some specific observations are made concerning possible causes of variation, and the effect of pen-natal mortality on fertility is demonstrated. Finally, methods for calculating legitimate fertility rates by order of birth are classified. These are closely related to techniques developed in later years for studying the populations of entire countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demographers have attempted to graduate schedules of age-specific fertility rates since the 1930's and there are now several functions which could be fitted to these rates. But little work has been done to date to construct model schedules of fertility. An exploratory study to examine the possibility of fitting certain mathematical formulae to cumulative fertility rates of marriage cohorts in England and Wales 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 childbearing span. To test the adequacy of the generated system for describing observed fertility distributions, the researchers have estimated the distribution of mean family sizes by age at and duration of marriage, for a selection of marriage cohorts of completed fertility in England and Wales and Sweden using various methods. The adequacy of the generated system to describe widely different childbearing patterns suggests that the researchers have a useful tool for fertility projections because, if they are prepared to accept the idea that "a marriage cohort carries its own fertility pattern with it", it follows that changes in fertility patterns consist mainly of a shift of the location of the cumulative fertility curve on the standardized vertical and horizontal scales.

In Western society the process of fertility decline is often regarded as an innovation process. The assumptions behind this approach seem rather questionable, and the diffusion lags or gradients of limited importance. Both Swedish and other European data are used as illustrations. It is suggested that the decline be treated within the wider sociological perspective of a time-consuming adjustment or change process, not necessarily starting from a position of completely uncontrolled fertility within marriage. The situation in to-day's high fertility populations is briefly discussed against this background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Swedish population thought in the eighteenth century. Eighteenth-century Sweden is best known to demographers for the establishment at mid-century of the first of the modern series of official population data. The period also has some particular interest for the history of population thought because of the position of Sweden, a peripheral nation somewhat outside the main currents of European development at the time, where the older way life continued and where the cultural revolution of agricultural change and industrialization came relatively late. In eighteenth-century Swedish population thought there lingered some remnants of the older and harsher conception that the individual exists for the good of the state, that the means of subsistence are rigidly limited, that the state or community is entitled to restrict individual liberty, as in marriage and land-holding, and that the public good is advanced by poverty of the workers. More prominent in Swedish population thought at this time, however, were the newer cameralist and mercantilist ideas. It was a period of active intellectual and business contacts abroad. It had long been royal policy to bring distinguished foreigners to the court and to the universities. One gets an impression of considerable internationalism in the aristocracy and the upper classes.

This concludes the study, the first part of which appeared in vol. II, no. I of Population Studies. The present section deals with such collective schemes as free confinement services for all mothers, maternity and infant homes, free admittance to maternity and infant welfare clinics, non-residential child welfare. institutions, free school meals and free travel for mothers and children. The chief measure in Swedish population policy is the child allowance granted to all children in all families. Children of invalids, widows, unmarried mothers, etc., receive supplementary grants. Provisions aiming to overcome man-power difficulties in industry and in the home are discussed including immigration, the rationalization of house-hold work, home helps service, etc. The proposal for a Population Institute is considered and the cost of the various measures of Swedish population policy is estimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on recent developments in Swedish population policy. Sweden is one of the countries in which the demographic situation has been most serious. And it is also a country in which one of the most comprehensive programmes of population policies has been put forward and implemented. In 1935 the first Population Commission was set up. The Commission made several inquiries into various aspects of the population problem, including the question of the causes of the declining birth-rate, and in the years 1936-8 put forward a number of proposals. The new Commission set up in 1946 discussed various aspects of population policy without feeling bound either by the work or by the points of view of its predecessor. The problems under discussion have been somewhat similar for the two commissions. Sex problem, birth control, voluntary parenthood, and the like, occupied a central position in the work of the first Commission, but this was not the case for the new Commission.