Some Socio-Economic Correlates of Completed Family Size, 1960.

The article presents a discussion on the socio-economic characteristics of families in Eastern and Western Visayas in the Philippines during 1960. The article summarizes the findings of an on-going study of a 0.5 per cent sample of households enumerated in 1960 in the nine cities and eleven provinces of Eastern and Western Visayas. According to the study, urban wives were more highly educated than their rural sisters. Attention is drawn to the high proportion (53 per cent) of rural women aged 45-64 years who have had no education at all, in contrast to only 38 per cent in these age groups residing in the cities of West and East Visayas. Close to three-fourths of the married women were white-collar workers with the highest concentration found in villages. Farming ranked next among rural wives, while their urban counterparts preferred blue-collar occupations. Blue-collar workers reported a greater number of children than white-collar workers. There were very slight differences in the marital fertility of women in urban and rural areas of the Visayas. Fertility ratios for wives aged 45-54 years in the rural sector were not much higher than corresponding ratios for the urban places. If urban influences were to filter gradually, to the rural sectors, the latter may be expected to exhibit decline in fertility.