Analysis of Fertility

The analysis of human fertility is of central importance in demographic analysis. In the first place, births are a vital component of the population balancing equation introduced in Chap. 1, and thus a vital element in the study of population change. More particularly they are, on a world scale, the single growth element in the balancing equation, and concern over population growth arguably has been the main stimulus to demography’s development as a discipline. Efforts to slow population growth typically concentrate on attempting to reduce fertility. Deliberately increasing mortality is not an acceptable option, and while restricting immigration sometimes offers short-term potential, promoting emigration usually is neither a feasible nor a long-term solution either. The need to monitor efforts to reduce population growth by reducing fertility highlights the importance of being able to measure fertility, fertility change, and the sources of that change.