BIRTH AND DEATH RATES1950-55 1955-60 1960-65 1965-70 1970-75 1975-80 1980-85 1985-90 1990-95012345678(^9) United States
Spain
China
Egypt
Mexico
Births per woman
6.9
6.6
6.2
2.6 2.7 2.9
3.3
2.5
2.9
6.1
6.6
5.5
4.9
2.9 3.3
2.6
2.0 1.8
5.3
5.3 5.1
4.6
3.6
2.4
1.9
1.5 1.3
1.9
2.0
3.1
4.2 3.8
2.5
1.9
1.8
6.8
6.5
3.4 3.7
5.6
7.0
7.0 7.1
6.8
5.7
Figure 2. Total Fertility Rates: Selected Countries, 1950–1995.
SOURCE: United Nations, World Population Prospects, 1996.
woman. A few, including Ethiopia, Somalia, Niger,
and Angola, equal or exceed seven births per
woman. As a result, sub-Saharan Africa is growing
at about 2.6 percent per year. If unchanged, Afri-
ca’s population would double in twenty-seven years.
Change, however, appears underway in most Afri-
can countries. The largest fertility declines since
1980 have occurred in North African countries
like Egypt (Figure 2) and in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and
South Africa. Nevertheless, fertility in all African
countries remains well above replacement. The
continent’s 1998 total fertility rate was 5.6 births
per woman.
Fertility has declined to lower levels in other
developing regions. Led by three decades of de-
cline in Mexico (Figure 2), Brazil, Ecuador, Peru,
and Venezuela, fertility rates for Central and South
America have declined to 3.4 and 2.8 births per
woman, respectively. Most Caribbean countries
have near replacement-level fertility. Haiti, the
Dominican Republic, and Jamaica are the major
exceptions.
Rapid fertility declines also have occurred
throughout much of Asia. China’s aggressive birth
control policy and nascent economic growth re-
duced its fertility to 1.8 births per woman (Figure
2), about the same as its Korean and Taiwanese
neighbors. A number of other Asian countries,
including the large populations of Bangladesh,
Iran, Thailand, Vietnam, and Turkey, experienced
more than a 50 percent decline in the last two
decades of the twentieth century. The even larger
populations of India and Indonesia continued
their previous slow downward trend, yielding 1998
rates of 3.4 and 2.7 births per woman, respectively.
Only a few Asian countries, other than traditional
Moslem societies such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and
Pakistan, continue to have more than five births
per woman.
The fertility measures discussed up to this
point are period rates. They are based on data for a
particular year and represent the behavior of a
cross-section of age groups in the population in
that year. Fertility also can be measured over the
lifetime of birth cohorts. Cumulative fertility rates
can be calculated for each birth cohort of women
by summing the age-specific fertility rates that
prevailed as they passed through each age (Shryock
and Siegel 1976, p. 289). This calculation yields a
completed fertility rate for birth cohorts that have
reached the end of their reproductive years. It is
the cohort equivalent of the period total fer-
tility rate.
DEATH RATES
The measurement of mortality raises many of the
same issues discussed with fertility. Rates are more
informative than absolute numbers, and those
rates that more precisely define the population at