Murray Gendell

FERTILITY AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY OF WOMEN IN GUATEMALA CITY, 1964

Data from a five percent census sample reveal that in Guatemala City in 1964 economically active women, especially domestic servants, had lower cumulative fertility than inactive women, partly because larger proportions of them had never married and were childless. However, even among ever married mothers there was a substantial differential, which was not due to differences in age at first birth. With respect to all women, cross tabulation and regression analysis show that age, marital status and educational attainment were more strongly associated with fertility than was activity status, but the latter also had a significant net association. Selection for sterility was not likely. Being contrary to expectations expressed in the literature, the very low fertility of the domestics received further attention. Live-in domestics had considerably lower fertility than those who lived out, which was also the case in the United States in 1960. These data and other evidence strongly suggest that this differential is due to a widespread employer preference for single or childless women. The concept of role incompatibility is therefore inapplicable to domestic servants. These findings add to the considerable evidence showing lower fertility among economically active women in large urban places in Latin America.

Postamenorrheic versus postpartum strategies of contraception

The postpartum strategy of inserting an intra-uterine device shortly after a birth essentially eliminates the risk of conceiving again before starting contraception but maximizes the overlap between wearing time and postpartum anovulation when protection is not needed. In contrast, the postamenorrheic strategy of delaying insertion until right after the woman’s first menses all but removes overlap with anovulation but allows a chance of conception before start of contraception because sometimes an ovulation precedes the first menstruation.In this paper some algebra is developed and utilized to see which of the two strategies delays the next conception longer. The postamenorrheic strategy is found to have a slight advantage over the postpartum approach for a wide range of fecundability levels, lengths of anovulation, and rates of continuation of IUD. However this slight advantage presupposes that insertions are taking place at the exact time prescribed. When a progressively larger factor of procrastination is introduced, the advantage rapidly passes from the postamenorrheic to the postpartum approach. An explanation for the differing sensitivity of the two insertion strategies with respect to procrastination is derived from the results of an earlier analysis.

Fertility and development in Brazil

ResumenEn el pasado, uno de los hechos concomitantes del desarrollo ha sido una reduction sostenida en la fecundidad. Como resultado de esta experiencia, los demógrafos plantean la hipótesis de que, en una sociedad en la cual la fecundidad es baja en las áreas urbanas entre los grupos de estatus socio económica más elevados y mejor educados, la fecundidad disminuirá a niveles moderados a medida que el país cambie de una estructura rural, socio económica agrícola, con bajos niveles de vida y de educación, a una estructura urbana, industrial con crecientes niveles de vida y educación. Los datos analizados en este estudio indican, sin embargo, que aunque en el Brasil ha ocurrido un evidente desarrollo económico y social, al menos desde 1920–40 a 1960 (medido por las cambios en la estructura social, ingreso per cápita, urbanización, y educación), época en la que existian diferenciales de fecundidad del tipo descrito anteriormente, la fecundidad ha mostrado muy poca o ninguna tendencia a disminuir. Entre 1940 y 1960, en realidad la tasa de natalidad parece haberse mantenido bastante constante, alrededor de 43. Con la tasa de mortalidad en franca disminución la tasa de incremento natural y crecimiento poblacional (dada una pequeã inmigración neta) se ha venido acelerando.Desde un punto de vista teórico, estas hechos refuerzan una noción coda vez más definida, basada en similares hallazgos en algunos otros paises en desarrollo, de que las ideas teóricas prevalescientes, sobre la relación entre desarrollo y fecundidad requieren alguna modification, particularmente en cuanto se refiere a una mayor especificidad. Desde el punto de vista práctica, se plantea el interrogante de si la tasa de desarrollo económico del Brasil, durante el período de postguerra hasta 1960, puede ser mentenida, al punto que ha aumentado, frente a una tasa de crecimiento poblacional que probablemente estará entre 3.2 y 3.5 por ciento para el periodo de 1960–70, y la cual, en ausencia de una disminución de la fecundidad, es posible que se acelere más.SummaryIn the past, one of the concomitants of development has been a sustained reduction in fertility. As a result of this experience, demographers hypothesize that in a society in which fertility is lower in urban areas, among the upper socioeconomic status groups and the better-educated, fertility will decline to a moderate level as the country changes from a rural, agricultural socioeconomic structure, with low levels of living and education, to an urban, industrial structure, with rising levels of living and education.The data analyzed in this study indicate, however, that though substantial social and economic development (as measured by changes in industrial structure, per capita income, urbanization, and education) occurred in Brazil from at least 1920–40 to 1960, during which time fertility differentials of the kind indicated above existed, fertility has shown little or no tendency to decline. Between 1940 and 1960, in fact, the birth rate appears to have remained fairly constant around 43. With the death rate steadily dropping, the rate of natural increase and population growth (given a small net in-migration) has been accelerating. p ]From a theoretical point of view, these facts reinforce a growing realization, based on similar findings in some other developing countries, that the prevailing theoretical ideas concerning the relationship between development and fertility require modification, particularly in the direction of greater specificity. On the practical side, the question is raised whether Brazil’s rate of economic development during the postwar period up to 1960 can be maintained, let alone increased, in the face of a population growth rate which will probably average 3.2–3.5 percent for the period 1960–70 and which, in the absence of a decline in fertility, is likely to accelerate further.