Interrelations between nuptiality and fertility: the evidence from the World Fertility Survey.

World Fertility Survey (WFS) data are used in this paper to examine the interrelations between nuptiality and fertility for a number of Asian-Pacific countries. The focus is upon the impact of age at marriage and termination of marriage since premartial conception or variation in types of marital unions are generally not very significant in Asia. A section of the paper does examine the situation of nuptiality and fertility in Latin American countries. As background to the examination of nuptiality-fertility interrelationships 1 section summarizes the patterns and trends in age at marriage and termination of marriage in the countries being studied i.e. Fiji Korea Malaysia Bangladesh Sri Lanka Nepal Indonesia Thailand Pakistan and Australia. For most countries the proportion of reproductive time lost because of marital disruption decreases as age at marriage increases (Sri Lanka is a clear exception) but the impact is not particularly great as a result of the net effect of dissolution and remarriage. Even though the rate of marriage dissolution is greater for those women who marry at younger ages rates of remarriage are much higher at younger ages. As periods of dissolution tend to be concentrated in the teenage or older ages the effect of dissolution on completed fertility will tend to be less than that implied by reproductive time lost. A very weak relationship was found between age at 1st marriage and completed fertility of ever married women in the countries under study. Completed fertility was highest in Thailand even though its age at marriage was also among the highest. Completed fertility was lowest in Indonesia where age at marriage is very low. For individuals within each country the negative relationship between age at 1st marriage and completed fertility was usually quite strong particularly for ages at 1st marriage of 18 and older. This indicates that country specific factors affecting marital fertility are sufficient to blur the underlying relationship between age at marriage and fertility in cross-national comparisons. Duration-specific fertility appears to be quite similar for women marrying at 18 years and older until the influence of older age sub-fecundity commences. From that time the duration-specific fertility of women marrying later 22-24 or 25 and older naturally begins to fall rapidly relative to those marrying younger and hence their completed fertility is lower. In the 8 countries of Latin America studied it appears that women who first married relatively late had lower completed fertility than their age peers married in the late teens.