have risen in the first half of the 20th century in many parts of the developing world and indeed continued to rise in some instances throughout the 1950s and 1960s (Dyson and Murphy, 1985). Only in rare cases did childbearing decline in developing countries in the 1950s, and all these cases were atypical countries (e.g., Singapore, Puerto Rico) with close ties to the industrial West.

The beginnings of dramatic change in human reproduction in developing countries can be traced back to the 1960s. By the end of the decade, fertility had started to drop in 47 of 141 developing countries, although in many instances these changes were modest and unconfirmed for years. In the 1970s, another 32 countries and in the 1980s another 25 countries began to experience declines in childbearing, leaving a residue of 23 countries with no evidence of change prior to 1995 (Figure 3-1).

With these declines, total fertility in 1990-1995 stood at 3.3 children in all developing countries combined, a fall of nearly 50 percent from midcentury levels. Across regions, the variation is large, from 1.9 in East

FIGURE 3-1 Percentage of countries that have started fertility decline by a given date, by region.

SOURCE: Data from Casterline (2000), who dates transition from the point of peak fertility, after which total fertility must have declined at least 10 percent.