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OCR for page 46
CHAPTER 4
CHILDBEARING IN CHINA SINCE 195 0
TOTAL FERTILITY RATES
The published report on the 1/1,000-sample survey of
fertility in 1982 includes data on age-specific fertility
rates by single years of age from 1950 through 1981. The
published tables also include single-year rates for the
rural and urban populations for these years and a
separately tabulated set of rates for the total population
extending back to 1940. The detailed fertility histories
were obtained by interviewing women aged 15-67. Because
of the upper age limit, the age-specific fertility rates
presented for women aged 49 are derived from actual
responses of the women interviewed only for years after
1964, rates for women aged 45 are derived from responses
only after 1959, etc. The upper age limit of the women
interviewed also means that all rates above age 25 in
1940 were estimated by methods not explicitly described.
As noted above, comparison of the annual number of
births thus calculated with the annual number from
official sources indicates that the official number of
births is understated. The comparison also shows sys-
tematically lower ratios of official numbers of births to
calculated numbers of births for years that have 13 lunar
months. It is thus clear that the number of births
reported in the fertility survey in those years was too
high. Table 5 shows birth rates and total fertility
rates (TFRs) based on the estimated annual number of
births calculated from the fertility rates reported from
the survey. Also shown in Table 5 are birth rates and
TFRS adjusted for overstatement of births in years with
13 lunar months and for understatement in other years.
If all births were reported by the lunar calendar,
13-month years would have 1.05 times the number of births
46
OCR for page 47
47
TABLE 5 Birth Rate and Total Fertility Rate Derived
from Fertility Survey: China
~ .
Unadjusted
Ad justeda
Birth Rate Birth Rate
Year (per 1,000) TFR (per 1,000) TFR
. . .
1950 46 e 5 5 ~ 81 41e 3 5 e 93
1951 39 ~ 8 5 ~ 70 40 ~ 6 5 ~ 82
1952 45 ~ 1 6 ~ 47 43 ~ 7 6 ~ 26
1953 42 ~ 2 6 ~ 05 43 ~ 1 6 ~ 17
1954 43.5 6~28 44~4 6~41
1955 42 ~ 7 6 ~ 26 41 ~ 3 6 ~ 06
1956 39 ~ 4 5 ~ 85 40 ~ 2 5 ~ 97
1957 42 ~ 5 6 ~ 41 41 ~ 1 6 ~ 21
1958 36 ~ 9 5 ~ 68 37 ~ 7 5 ~ 80
1959 27 ~ 7 4 ~ 30 28 ~ 3 4 ~ 39
1960 26~0 4~02 25~2 3~89
1961 21.9 3 ~ 29 22 ~ 3 3 ~ 36
1962 40~1 6~02 40~9 6~14
1963 48 ~ 9 7 ~ 50 47 ~ 3 7 ~ 26
1964 39~9 6~18 40~7 6~31
1965 38 ~ 9 6 ~ 08 39 ~ 7 6 ~ 20
1966 39~6 6~26 38~3 6~06
1967 33 ~ 4 5 ~ 31 34 ~ 1 5 ~ 42
1968 40~4 6~45 39~1 6~24
1969 35 ~ 8 5 ~ 72 36 ~ 5 5 ~ 84
1970 36 ~ 5 5 ~ 81 37 ~ 2 5~93
1971 34 ~ 6 5 ~ 44 33 ~ 5 5 ~ 27
1972 31~8 4~98 32~4 5~08
1973 29 ~ 5 4 ~ 54 30.1 4 ~ 63
1974 28~0 4~17 27~1 4~04
1975 24 ~ 8 3 ~ 57 25 ~ 3 3 ~ 64
1976 23 ~ 2 3 ~ 24 22 ~ 5 3 ~ 14
1977 21e 1 2 ~ 84 21e 5 2 ~ 90
1978 20~8 2~72 21~2 2~78
1979 21.6 2 ~ 75 20 ~ 9 2 ~ 66
1980 18~1 2~24 18~5 2~29
1981 21~2 2~63 (21~2) (2~63)
1982 21~3 2~66 (21~3) (2~66)
aAdjusted to correct for effect of lunar calendar
and for understatement in other years.
OCR for page 48
48
in a solar calendar year, and 12-month years would have
.97 times the number in a solar year. The adjusted birth
rates and TFRs are calculated on the assumption that
two-thirds of the reported births are based on lunar
years: leap-year (13-months) rates were divided by 1.033
and non-leap-year (12-months) rates by 0.98.
The unadjusted total fertility rates in Table 5 are
taken directly from the report on the fertility survey,
which also contains partially estimated TFRS for 1940-49,
with an average value of 5.44 for that decade. This rate
differs very little from the total fertility rate of 5.50
estimated by Barclay and others (1976) for the Chinese
farm population in 1929-31. The total fertility rate
from the survey rises to about 6.0 through the 1950s
until 1958, when a dramatic decline begins. An increase
in fertility from 5.5 to 6.0 as part of the first impact
of modernizing forces is not unusual. It frequently
occurs because of the diminished effect of various
customs and practices that restrict fertility below its
potential maximum in almost every less-developed
country. These customs and practices, which do not vary
according to the number of children already born and
hence are not intended to impose a direct limit on the
size of the family, include prolonged breastfeeding,
periodic separation of spouses because of seasonal
migration, prohibition of intercourse during lactation,
etc.7
The most striking features of the sequence of TFRS are
the dramatic reduction from 1956 to 1961 (the TFR in 1961
is only a little more than half of the TFR in 1957); the
recovery in 1962 to a TFR similar to the 1950s; and the
unique, very high TFR of 7.5 in 1963. The TFR in the
mid-to-late 1960s was comparable to the mid-1950s except
for a temporary drop in 1967, coinciding with the Cultural
Revolution. A sustained decline began after 1970,
reaching a low in 1980 that was more than 60 percent
below the level in 1970; there was a modest recovery in
1981, but only to a fertility level still well below half
the level in 1970. These episodes of a large reduction,
an extraordinary recovery, and a subsequent major decline
are analyzed further below.
THE EFFECT OF CHANGES IN NUPTIALITY ON THE RATE OF
CHILDBEARING
Changes in age at marriage have a different effect on
fertility in populations in which married couples
OCR for page 49
49
practice little contraception and therefore have similar
age-specific marital fertility rates whatever the age at
marriage and in populations in which married couples
effectively control fertility and attain fixed targets of
completed size of family. In noncontracepting popula-
tions, increases in age at marriage reduce the number of
children born to each cohort of women by reducing the
number of younger women exposed to the risk of child-
bearing. The reduced number of younger women who are
currently married causes lower fertility in each time
period as well as for each cohort. In populations
practicing effective contraception, changes in age at
marriage alter the timing of births for each cohort of
women without necessarily alterina the final average size
of family achieved.
_ ~ _ , _ _ ,
A postponement of childbearing
caused by later marriage produces a temporary reduction
in period fertility even if cohort total fertility is not
changed. When age at marriage stops increasing, this
temporary depression of fertility ends.
The effect of increasing age at marriage on fertility
even when each cohort achieves the same family size is
not generally noticed nor well understood. Imagine, for
example, that all women marry at the mean age of marriage
and bear only one child, one year after marriage. Suppose
that for a long period the age at marriage is 22 years
and that both the total first-marriage rate and the total
fertility rate are 1.0.
Then suppose that at a certain
moment the mean age at marriage rises to 23 years. In
the year following this shift, there would be no marriages
because the cohort that was 22 in the preceding year
would all have already married and the cohort becoming 22
in the given year would not marry until reaching 23 a
year later. In the ensuing year there would be no births
for a similar reason. So from a one-year increase in age
at marriage (and age at childbearing) there would be a
loss of a full year's quota of marriages and a full
year's quota of births even though the proportion ever
marrying and the completed family size for every cohort
remained fixed. In a more complex change of the sort
that actually occurs, a rise in the mean age at marriage
within a period of time means that one year's quota of
marriages is lost, not in a single year, but during a
scan of several vears.
A rise by one year in the mean
age of childbearing also means the loss, over a span of
years, of one year's quota of births, even though
completed size of family of cohorts does not change.
OCR for page 50
50
The effect of changes in age at marriage on changes in
the total fertility rate can be evaluated under two quite
different assumptions about the fertility of the married
women when age at marriage is changing. One assumption
is that the fertility of married women at each age remains
constant as age of entry into marriage changes. This
assumption is logically tenable if there is very little
contraceptive practice. The second assumption is that
the fertility of married women at each duration of mar-
riage remains fixed, with a duration-specific fertility
schedule that declines quite steeply because each
marriage cohort is curtailing its childbearing after the
early attainment of desired family size.
The change in fertility associated with changing nup-
tiality in China can be estimated under both of these
assumptions. First the effect of changes in age at
marriage on total fertility is determined when the
schedule of age-specific marital fertility is fixed. The
proportion of ever-married women at each age in selected
years is combined with the age-specific fertility of the
ever-married women in 1956. The age pattern of marital
fertility in the 1950s (see below) differs little from
the age pattern characteristic of populations that do not
deliberately control fertility (do not try to reduce
childbearing when desired family size has been reached)
by contraception or abortion. The first calculation
shows the reduction in the total fertility rate that
would have occurred if the virtual absence of contra-
ception and abortion of the 1950s had continued (and if
there had been no change in factors, such as duration and
intensity of breastfeeding, that affect marital fertility
in the absence of contraception). The data provided in
the report of the 1982 fertility survey are the basis for
this calculation. The proportion of ever-married women
at each age in each year since 1950 is estimated by the
cumulation of first-marriage rates for each cohort (see
Table A-4).8 Division of the tabulated overall age-
specific fertility rate at a given age by the proportion
ever married at that age yields an age-specific fertility
rate of ever-married women. The next step is to multiply
the proportion of ever-married women at each age in
different years by the age-specific ever-married fertility
rates of 1956. The results are shown in Table 6. The
total fertility rate would have fallen by a little more
than 20 percent from 1950 to 1980 and then risen by
several percent to 1982 if the ever-married fertility
rates of 1956 had been in effect. Most of the decline in
OCR for page 51
51
TABLE 6 Total Fertility Rate Calculated for Selected
Years, from Proportion of Women Ever Married and
Age-Specific Marital Fertility Rates, 1956: China
Year
1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1982
Calculated TRE 5.97 5.87 5.68 5.62 5.42 4.96 4.71 4.88
TFR of 1950=100 100 98.3 95.1 94.1 90.8 83.1 78.9 81.7
total fertility rate would have occurred after 1970, when
the greater part of the rise in age at marriage occurred.
The TFR in 1980 was 61 percent lower than the TFR in
1950; the decline that would have occurred from changes
in marriage alone, with constant marital fertility rates,
is thus about one-third of the actual decline.
The second calculation of the effects of changing
nuptiality is limited to the years after 1970, when the
change in nuptiality was greatest and when there was a
major increase in the deliberate restriction of marital
fertility by contraception and abortion. The rationale
of this calculation is different from the first.
Duration-specific marital fertility rates have been
calculated for 1970, 1977, and 1981 from data in the 1982
fertility survey that give the number of births to women
at marriage durations of 0-1, 1-2, .
.
., 19-20, and 20+
years in those 3 years and from estimates of the number
of ever-married women classified by duration of marriage
(Song et al., 1983). The number of women by age in each
year~have been determined by intracohort interpolation:
multiplication by the proportion ever married provides
the number of ever-married women by age, and the
distribution of the ever-married at each age by duration
can then be ascertained from the sequence of first-
marriage rates in the cohort for earlier years and
younger ages. (The estimated number of ever-married
women by duration of marriage from 1970 to 1982 is shown
in Table A-5.) The ratio of births by duration since
first marriage to number of ever-married women by
duration provides a set of duration-specific ever-married
fertility rates for 1970, 1977, and 1981 (see Table
A-6). The next step is to assume that the married women
in each year from 1970 on were subject to 1981 duration-
OCR for page 52
52
specific fertility rates. This assumption is based on
the hypothesis that women during the 1970s were as
effective in limiting marital fertility at every stage of
marriage as were women at the corresponding stage of
marriage in 1981. Such a hypothesis is acceptable (even
as an hypothesis) only when it incorporates a schedule of
duration-specific fertility that falls off rapidly after
relatively high values at early durations, because only
then would it be possible for duration-specific fertility
to remain unchanged when mean age at marriage increases.
When fertility is little controlled (as in 1956) women
marrying at age 25 might have about the same fertility at
each duration during the first 10 years of marriage as
women marrying at 21, but not in the 20th year, when
reduced capacity for reproduction would cause lower
fertility among those who had married at 25.
In short, the calculation of the births that would
have occurred from 1970 to 1981 with the duration-
specific fertility rates of 1981 illustrates the change
in total fertility rate that would have resulted from
changes in age at marriage, even if each cohort had
maintained lifetime fertility approximately constant but
had shifted the time of childbearing by marrying later.
Table 7 shows the results. There were almost 30 million
births in 1970; with 1981 duration-specific fertility
there would have been only about 16 million. The TFR in
1970 would have been only 3.09 with 1981 duration-
specific rates; it was 5.81. Had the rates remained
unchanged at the low level, the TFR would have declined
from 3.09 in 1970 to a low of 2.41 in 1979 and then risen
to 2.85 in 1981. With no change in duration-specific
fertility rates (and therefore approximately constant
cohort total fertility), there would have been a decline
to only 78 percent of the 1970 TFR in 1979 and then a
recovery to 92 percent in 1982.
The two calculations--with constant age-specific
fertility rates (as of 1956) and constant duration-
specific rates (as of 1981)--illustrate different sorts
of influence that changes in age at marriage can have on
overall fertility. The first calculation shows that had
there been no increased use of contraception (and no
change in "natural" fertility from reduced breastfeeding),
the TFR would have fallen by about 20 percent from 1950
to 1980 because rising age at marriage would have reduced
the average exposure to married life and the attendant
risk of childbearing. The second calculation shows that
even with fixed, highly controlled marital fertility in
OCR for page 53
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OCR for page 54
54
which childbearing beyond the early durations of marriage
is severely limited, the TFR would have declined by about
20 percent from 1970 to 1979 because rising age at mar-
riage during these years would have reduced the number of
married women at early durations. Recall that the total
first-marriage rate was low during most of the 1970s (as
low as 0.64) despite the continuation of universal entry
into marriage cohort by cohort. The increase in mean age
at marriage that was the principal source of low total
marriage rates also produced a reduced number of women in
the early durations of marriage. The cessation and
slight reversal of the increase in age at marriage, plus
the marriage boom associated with the new marriage law of
1980, produced a phenomenal increase in the total
marriage rate and a commensurate increase in the number
of marriages of short duration. A consequence is that a
rise in overall fertility by 18 percent (from a TFR of
2.41 in 1979 to one of 2.85 in 1982) would have occurred
with constant fertility by duration of marriage.
The report of the 1982 fertility survey does not
provide a time series of age-specific rates of fertility
by order of birth, but it does show such rates for 1980
and 1981. The total first-birth rate (the sum over all
childbearing ages of age-specific rates of bearing a
first child) rose from 0.869 in 1980 to 1.162 in 1981--
nearly three-fourths of the increase in the total fer-
tility rate. (Of the increase in the TFR, 90 percent is
in the total first-birth rate plus the total second-birth
rate, both increases largely the result of compression in
1981 of first and second births by women at different
ages into the same time period because of the marriage
boom and the reduction in age at marriage.) Some increase
in fertility would occur with constant duration-specific
fertility even if age at marriage merely stopped rising.
If the continued increase in age at marriage had ceased
and not reversed, the total first- marriage rate would
have returned to about 1.0; the persistent shortage in
the annual number of first marriages caused by rising
mean age at marriage would have ended.
AGE PATTERNS OF MARITAL FERTILITY
One of the benefits of the detailed information that
appears in the report of the 1982 fertility survey is the
feasibility of calculating age-specific marital fertility
schedules. To do so, the proportion of ever-married
OCR for page 55
55
women by age is determined from the data on first
marriages; a fertility schedule of the ever-married women
is then obtained by dividing the overall fertility of
women at each age by the proportion ever married.
Finally, the marital fertility schedule is derived by a
further division of the ever-married rate at each age by
the estimated proportion of currently married to ever-
married women. This last proportion can be estimated as
having approximately the same values in different calendar
years because of the surprisingly little difference
between it in i982 and in the Chinese farm population in
1930. The proprortion of currently married to ever-
married women at the two dates are as follows:
Age
Year 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44
1982 .986 .977 .960 .933 .888
1929-31 .981 .968 .953 .916 .860
The very slight difference in these ratios despite the
very substantial difference in mortality implies that the
higher incidence of widowhood at the earlier date must
have been offset by a high rate of remarriage of widows.
Approximate age-specific marital fertility schedules by
single years of age from 20 through 39 have been
calculated for selected years. In every year the ratio
of currently married to ever-married women was assumed
equal to the average of the ratios for 1929-31 and 1982.
In Figure 13, marital fertility rates are shown
relative to a schedule of "naturals fertility, with the
ratio to natural fertility at ages 20-24 set equal to
1.00. The comparison with natural fertility provides
indirect evidence of the extent to which marital
fertility is affected by deliberate control through the
use of contraception and abortion. Louis Henry (1961)
was the first to note that the age pattern of marital
fertility was similar in different populations in which
couples do not practice contraception or take other
measures to reduce fertility after a certain family size
is reached; he called such fertility "natural." In
OCR for page 56
56
1 .2
1.1
1.0
0.9
0.8
0-7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
o
ILL
[~< =~ ~~ ~ 6
it,
·—
.
.
__ 1 970
1961
-
1 980
1 1 1
20 25 30 35 40
AGE
FIGURE 13 Ratio of Age-Specific Marital Fertility to
Natural Fertility (with ratio at 20-24 set at 1.00),
1956, 1961, 1970, 1975, and 1980: China
Figure 13, the calculated marital fertility rates are
divided by a set of natural fertility rates, with the two
schedules--a schedule for China and an average of natural
fertility schedules selected for good quality of data
from those cited by Henry (Coale and Trussell, 1974)--
brought to the same average at ages 20-24. In 1956 the
ratio of marital fertility to natural fertility remains
above 0.9 except for two points that are probably the
result of sampling variation or slightly inexact
reporting by respondents who were over age 60 in 1982.
In 1961 the TFR was only 56 percent of the TFR in 1956;
the reduction in marital fertility was large at younger
ages (a 34 percent reduction at 20-24) as well as at
older ages (a 49 percent reduction at 35-39). To achieve
the modestly increased departure as age increases from
the low level of natural fertility schedule in 1961 would
entail only a modest use of deliberate limitation by
older women.
Low fertility among young as well as older married
women in 1961 is consistent with restriction of child-
bearing caused not only by contraception but by social
disruption and the famine conditions in 1960. As noted
below, a very high peak in the death rate occurred
OCR for page 57
57
-
in 1960, the result of a famine associated with crop
failures induced by a combination of chaotic economic
conditions, drought, and floods. Famine is known to
prevent ovulation and to reduce male libido. Disruption
of normal family life while the population was mobilized
for various projects and engaged in searches for food,
like the direct effects of famine on reproductive ca-
pacity, would cause fertility to fall at all ages. The
death-rate peak in 1960 implies that 1960 was the worst
of the crisis; reduced conceptions in 1960 would produce
a very low TFR in 1961. The slightly steeper reduction
in marital fertility relative to natural fertility as age
increases in 1961 compared with 1956 may have been caused
by the greater susceptibility of older women to fertility
impairment during a famine. A further indication of a
quasi-biological basis for the very low marital fertility
in 1961 is the height of the peak in fertility reached in
1963. The TFR of 7.50 in 1963 is well above the highest
TFR during the 1950s (6.41 in 1957). The age structure
of marital fertility in 1963 is very similar to 1956, but
at a much higher level. The 1963/1956 ratio of marital
fertility rates by five-year intervals for women aged
20-24 to 35-39 varies only from 1.33 to 1.38. The
1963/1961 ratio of marital fertility rates increases from
2.06 at 20-24 to 2.70 at 35-39, possibly because of the
cessation of whatever slight degree of contraceptive
practice there may have been in 1960-61 or possibly
because the catastrophic situation in 1960-61 impaired
the fertility of older women more than the fertility of
younger women. Marital fertility that is at least
one-third higher in 1963 than in l9S6 at every five-year
age interval from 20 to 40 implies a much higher than
normal susceptibility to pregnancy. The source of such
above-normal susceptibility was doubtless an abnormally
low proportion of women who had recently given birth (who
experience many months without ovulation if they breast-
feed) and also an abnormally high number of newlyweds
(the total first-marriage rate in 1962 was 1.19).
In sum, the very low fertility of 1961 was probably
caused by the disruption of normal married life and by
famine-induced subfecundity; the unequaled high fertility
of 1963 resulted from the restoration of normal marital
life, from an abnormally large number of marriages, and
from the unusually small fraction of married women who
were infertile because of nursing a recently born
infant. The age structure of marital fertility was
essentially that of natural fertility, unaffected by
OCR for page 58
S8
deliberate restriction, in 1956 and again in 1963. At
the low point in 1961, marital fertility fell with age
slightly more steeply than does natural fertility. This
pattern may have resulted either from some practice of
folk methods of contraception or abortion or from a
greater biological effect of the crisis on older women.
In 1970 the decline of marital fertility with age
relative to natural fertility closely paralleled the
corresponding curve for 1961 (see Figure 13 above); but
in 1970 this decline was almost certainly the result of
an increase in deliberate control with age and not to the
biological factors that may have affected older women
disproportionately in 1960-61. In 1975 the steep fall of
fertility relative to natural fertility clearly shows the
much greater effect of fertility restriction among older
women; by 1980 the decline in marital fertility with age
is comparable to the structure of marital fertility in
highly developed societies with total fertility rates
below replacement levels.
DIFFERENTIAL FERTILITY
Urban/Rural Differences
The 1982 sample fertility survey provides annual data on
fertility and nuptiality in the detail already described
for the rural and urban populations as well as for the
total. The TFRs for the rural and urban populations are
given in Table 8 and shown graphically in Figure 14. In
the early 1950s average overall urban fertility increased
relative to rural fertility from about 80 to about 90
percent, and it remained at a constant ratio of about 90
percent until 1959 and 1960; evidently, rural fertility
was more affected by the Great Leap Forward than was
urban fertility. From 1960 to 1966 the ratio of rural to
urban TFR fell to about 50 percent, and since then the
ratio has been nearly constant. In absolute terms, rural
fertility in 1964 returned (after the crisis deficit and
the postcrisis peak) to about the level of the 1950s,
while urban fertility barely surpassed its 1957 level
even in 1963, fell steeply for a few years after 1963,
recovered somewhat in 1968, and then fell at the same
relative rate as did rural fertility. The decline of
urban fertility from 90 percent of rural fertility in the
late 1950s to about 50 percent in the late 1960s (while
rural fertility remained little changed) appears to
OCR for page 59
59
TABLE 8 Total Fertility Rates, Rural and
Urban Populations, 1950-81: China
Total Fertility Rate
Year Rural Urban Urban/Rural
1950 5.963 5.001 .839
1951 5.904 4.719 .799
1952 6.667 5.521 .828
1953 6.183 5.402 .874
1954 6.390 5.732 .897
1955 6.391 5.665 .886
1956 5.974 5.333 .893
1957 6.504 5.943 .914
1958 5.775 5.253 .910
1959 4.323 4.172 .965
1960 3.996 4.057 1.015
1961 3.349 2.982 .890
1962 6.303 4.789 .760
1963 7.784 6.207 .797
1964 6.567 4.395 .669
1965 6.597 3.749 .568
1966 6.958 3.104 .446
1967 5.847 2.905 .497
1968 7.025 3.872 .551
1969 6.263 3.299 .527
1970 6.379 3.267 .512
1971 6.011 2.882 .479
1972 5.503 2.637 .479
1973 5.008 2.387 .477
1974 4.642 1.982 .427
1975 3.951 1.782 .451
1976 3.582 1.608 .449
1977 3.116 1.574 .505
1978 2.968 1.551 .523
1979 3.045 1.373 .451
1980 2.480 1.147 .463
1981 2.910 1.390 .478
OCR for page 60
60
8
7
LL
6
J
J
o
l _
.
5
4
. · ~
~ i,;:
O ,, 1 1 1 1
1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985
A
~ ~ A
-
.
.
.
~ ·.
· . Rural
-
Urban
YEAR
FIGURE 14 Total Fertility Rates, Rural and Urban
Populations, 1950-81: China
conform to the classic picture often ascribed to (but not
always followed by) European fertility during the
so-called demographic transition: the urban population
has a higher age at marriage; it starts deliberate family
limitation before the rural population does; and after
the transition starts in the rural population, the urban
population continues to have lower rates of childbearing.
The early timing of the urban decline has a simpler
explanation, however: the antinatalist program was
initiated earlier and pursued more vigorously in the
cities.
Age-specific fertility rates of the rural and urban
populations in less, 1968, and 1980 are compared in
Figure 15. In 195S the difference between rural and
urban TFRs is composed almost equally of lower fertility
below age 25 in the cities (caused by later marriage) and
lower fertility above age 31 in the cities (caused by a
modest prevalence of contraception and abortion or
possibly by a higher proportion of widows). In 1968, the
rural fertility schedule looks much like the schedule in
1955 though slightly higher, except at the younger ages,
where slightly later marriage reduced fertility. The
early part of the urban schedule in 1968 shows the strong
effect of later marriage and the later part the strong
OCR for page 61
61
0.5 _
1955
0.4 _
0.3 _ ..
E .j~ I
0.2 _ ./ ~ :
:/ w
0.1 I
in O ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ IN .. ~
J 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
6 _
AGE
US
~ 0.5
-
LL
11
0.2
0.1
in
LL
0.4
L1J
~ 0.5
J
~ 0.3
LL
LL
cat
c:
in
UJ
0.4
0.2
0.1
. . ~
~ fN
.
1968
· · .
.
/ ~ ..
.
/ v~ ..
: I
.
1—;1~ . . . 1
40 45 50
_ ,
15 20 25 30 35
AGE
1980
15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
AGE
FIGURE 15 Age-Specific Fertility Rates, Rural (dotted
line) and Urban (solid line) Populations, 1955, 1968, and
1980: China
OCR for page 62
62
effect of deliberate birth control. By 1980 these
effects are evident in the rural fertility schedule but
are still stronger for the urban schedule.
Han and Minority Group Differences
Another major difference in fertility in China is
revealed by data on the childbearing rates of the rural
Han population (the dominant Chinese ethnic group) and
those of the ethnic minorities, with a total population
of some 60 million persons (6 percent of the population).
(Li et al., 1983). The minorities have been exempt from
most of the pressures of the official antinatalist
program, are generally more isolated and less educated,
have strong pronatalist traditions, and have much higher
fertility. In 1981 the TFR of the minority populations
was 5.05 compared with 2.76 for the rural Han. The
age-specific fertility schedule of the minorities shows
the effect of earlier marriage up to age 25 and less
effective control of fertility at higher ages (Figure 16).
Other Fertility Determinants
There are also differences in fertility for women with
different levels of education and with differences in
occupation. In 1982 the average number of children ever
born to women aged 35-49 was 4.74 for illiterate women,
3.81 for women with primary school education, 3.08 for
women finishing junior high school, 2.41 for women
finishing senior high school, and 1.94 for university-
educated women. (These figures, taken from the report of
the survey, are subject to the following bias: the women
at higher levels of education are more concentrated near
age 35 in the 35-49 age interval because of rapid change
in education in China; their average parity is lowered by
this compositional feature.) At age 50 farmers had an
average parity of 5.95, workers of 4.27, and cadres of
3.10 (Li and Zhang, 1983; Zhao and Sun, 1983).
CONTRACEPTIVE PRACTICE IN CHINA
In a chapter entitled "Birth Control of Women of
Reproductive Age" in the special issue of Population and
Economics (Qui et al., 1983) devoted to the large-scale
OCR for page 63
63
0.5
0.3
02
Cay
LIJ
,,, 0. 1
6
o
,~,./- 1
15 20 25 30
it'
~ . .
.
.
-. ~
.
.
35 40 45 50
AGE
FIGURE 16 Age-Specific Fertility Rates, Ethnic Minority
Women (solid line) and Rural Han Women (dotted line),
1981: China
fertility survey, it is reported that 69.5 percent of
married women aged 15-49 were practicing contraception in
1982. Of these, 25 percent used female sterilization, 10
percent male sterilization, 50 percent IUDs, 8 percent
the pill, and 6 percent condom and other (Qui et al.,
1983). The overall rate of use is not very different
from Taiwan (65 percent), Hong Kong (72 percent), or
Japan (69 percent), but the use of sterilization was more
frequent in China than in those neighboring populations
(Population Reference Bureau, 1983).
Representative terms from entire chapter:
fertility rates
