Intergenerational fertility correlations in contemporary developing counties.

OBJECTIVES

To estimate the magnitude of intergenerational continuities in total and effective fertility among women in a group of 46 contemporary developing countries.

METHODS

Information collected from 93,000 women aged 45-49 for estimation of maternal mortality in the demographic and health surveys (DHS) program is analyzed using Pearson product moment intergenerational fertility correlations.

RESULTS

A positive but usually small intergenerational correlation is found for both completed fertility (CFS, total number of children born) and effective fertility (EFS, number of children surviving to age of reproduction). Although the developing countries are mainly located in sub-Saharan Africa, a similar pattern appears to hold for the Asian and Latin American countries included. Women in the second generation with no education have a stronger relationship with their parents' fertility than women with some education. The relationship is also stronger in rural than in urban areas and in countries with lower levels of development.

CONCLUSIONS

Intergenerational correlations of completed fertility in both generations are marginally stronger than for effective fertility largely because the number of a woman's total sibs is more strongly related to her subsequent childbearing than her number of adult sibs. Values of intergenerational correlations for these countries are similar to published values for a number of Western pretransitional populations, but well below values in contemporary developed societies.