Effect of declines in mortality on the birth rate and related measures

In this paper, the effect of declining mortality upon marital status distributions (proportions married, widowed, etc. In each age group) and through them upon birth rates and other related measures are studied while holding other factors such as “marriage pattern” and age-specific marital fertility rates constant. This was done by considering a stable population with a gross reproduction rate of 5 and expectation of life at birth 30 years (initial level) and comparing it with another stable population with expectation of life at birth 50 years (changed level) and the same marital fertility rates. The use of stable population models was found convenient because they show the effects of different levels of fertility and mortality, without the disturbance arising from abnormalities in the age distributions. The important conclusions are: (i) Though declines in mortality are of tremendous importance in explaining differences in growth rates., they seem to be much less important in explaining differences in birth rates, as the effects of slight increases in the proportions married in most fertile age groups and the increase in the “mean duration of potentially fertile married life” are to a great extent offset by changes in the age structure brought about by changed schedule of age-specific fertility rates as well as declining mortality. (ii) As a corollary of this, substantial increases in the “mean duration of potentially fertile married life” do not imply commensurate changes in fertility. In the models analysed in this study, a rise of about 30 per cent in the “mean duration of potentially fertile married life” was associated with a rise of only 12.3 per cent in the gross reproduction rate and 2.4 per cent in the crude birth rate

Biology · Birth rate · Family planning · Fertility · Marital status · Mortality rate · Population · Reproduction · Research methodology · Total fertility rate · Demography · Ecology · Global Health Care Issues · Health disparities and outcomes · Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management