DISTINGUISHING THE IMPACT OF POSTPONEMENT, SPACING AND STOPPING ON BIRTH INTERVALS: EVIDENCE FROM A MODEL WITH HETEROGENEOUS FECUNDITY

This paper investigates the impact on birth intervals of three distinct birth control strategies: stopping childbearing, spacing births and the postponement of further childbearing for reasons unrelated to women's family-building histories. A macro-simulation model of the family-building proces...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of biosocial science 2013-05, Vol.45 (3), p.311-330
Main Authors: TIMÆUS, IAN M., MOULTRIE, TOM A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age Factors
Biological and medical sciences
Birth
Birth Control
Birth Intervals - statistics & numerical data
Birth Spacing
Contraception - statistics & numerical data
Family Characteristics
Family planning
Fecundity
Female
Females
Fertility
General aspects
Humans
Medical sciences
Miscellaneous
Models, Statistical
Parity
Pregnancy
Public health. Hygiene
Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine
Regression analysis
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Summary:This paper investigates the impact on birth intervals of three distinct birth control strategies: stopping childbearing, spacing births and the postponement of further childbearing for reasons unrelated to women's family-building histories. A macro-simulation model of the family-building process is described that incorporates heterogeneity in fecundability. This model is used to demonstrate that the postponement of further childbearing has a distinctive impact on schedules of duration-specific fertility rates that differs from that of both family-size limitation and birth spacing. In particular, the simulation results, supplemented by an analytical exposition, show that reductions in fertility due to spacing are a function of interval duration and its log, while reductions due to postponement are a function of interval duration and its square. This provides a way to test statistically for the presence of, and distinguish between, differential postponement and spacing in regression analyses of birth history data.
ISSN:0021-9320
1469-7599
DOI:10.1017/S0021932012000648