The last 35 years or so have witnessed a dramatic shift in the demography of many developing countries. Before 1960, there were substantial improvements in life expectancy, but fertility declines were very rare. Few people used modern contraceptives, and couples had large families. Since 1960, however, fertility rates have fallen in virtually every major geographic region of the world, for almost all political, social, and economic groups. What factors are responsible for the sharp decline in fertility? What role do child survival programs or family programs play in fertility declines? Casual observation suggests that a decline in infant and child mortality is the most important cause, but there is surprisingly little hard evidence for this conclusion. The papers in this volume explore the theoretical, methodological, and empirical dimensions of the fertility-mortality relationship. It includes several detailed case studies based on contemporary data from developing countries and on historical data from Europe and the United States.

Table of Contents


Front Matter
1 Introduction
2 Effect of a Child's Death on Birth Spacing: A Cross-National Analysis
3 The Impact of Infant and Child Mortality Risk on Fertility
4 Learning and Lags in Mortality Perceptions
5 The Impact of AIDS Mortality on Individual Fertility: Evidence from Tanzania
6 Infant Mortality and the Fertility Transistion: Macro Evidence from Europe and New Findings from Prussia
7 The Relationship Between Infant and Child Mortality and Fertility: Some Historical and Contemporary Evidence for the United States
8 Fertility Response to Infant and Child Mortality in Africa with Special Reference to Cameroon
9 The Relationship Between Infant and Child Mortality and Subsequent Fertility in Indonesia: 1971-1991
10 Micro and Macro Effects of Child Mortality on Fertility: The Case of India
11 Child Mortality and the Fertility Transistion: Aggregated and Multilevel Evidence from Costa Rica
Index