Marital status composition and fertility: a comparative analysis of World Fertility Survey data
Kanjanapan, W.
In'gu Munje Nonjip 8: 153-175
1985
ISSN/ISBN: 0537-6998 PMID: 12222499 Document Number: 324058
The marital status composition of a population is an often neglected variable in research on fertility determinants in developing countries. Research is needed on the extent to which fertility is affected by factors governing exposure to sexual intercourse within, after, and between unions. Davis and Blake maintain that the relationship between fertility and time spent in marriage is a function of the level of sexual activity and childbearing outside legal marital unions, contraceptive usage, and the incidence and timing of 1st marriage as well as marital dissolution and remarriage. This hypothesis was explored through data derived from World Fertility Surveys in Bangladesh, Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. The percentage of currently married women in these countries was 86-94%, but considerable proportions of ever-married females have had a marriage broken through death of spouse, divorce, or legal separation. Although there were striking differences in proportions remarried among the countries under investigation (i.e., 4% in Pakistan, Korea, and Sri Lanka but 32% in Indonesia), the data support the assumption that high rates of remarriage accompany high rates of marital dissolution. The percentage remarried increases steadily with age. Also noted was an inverse association between the extent of broken marriage and the amount of time spent in the married state. In all 10 countries, completed fertility among married women 40-49 years was much higher than that of women whose marriages were disrupted. Women who experience marital dissolution are presumed to lose a period of exposure to risk of childbearing during the period between marriages, although this fertility deficit is often made up in subsequent marriage. In general, however, fertility decreases as reproductive time lost increases.