How does variance in fertility change over the demographic transition?

ABSTRACT: Most work on the human fertility transition has focused on declines in mean fertility. However, understanding changes in the variance of reproductive outcomes can be equally important for evolutionary questions about the heritability of fertility, individual determinants of fertility and changing patterns of reproductive skew. Here, we document how variance in completed fertility among women (45-49 years) differs across 200 surveys in 72 low- to middle-income countries where fertility transitions are currently in progress at various stages. Nearly all (91%) of samples exhibit variance consistent with a Poisson process of fertility, which places systematic, and often severe, theoretical upper bounds on the proportion of variance that can be attributed to individual differences. In contrast

SUBMITTER: Hruschka DJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4822435 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature