From Death to Birth

The last 35 years or so have witnessed a dramatic shift in the demography of many developing countries. Before 1960, there were substantial improvements in life expectancy, but fertility declines were very rare. Few people used modern contraceptives, and couples had large families. Since 1960, however, fertility rates have fallen in virtually every major geographic region of the world, for almost all political, social, and economic groups. What factors are responsible for the sharp decline in fertility? What role do child survival programs or family programs play in fertility declines? Casual observation suggests that a decline in infant and child mortality is the most important cause, but there is surprisingly little hard evidence for this conclusion. The papers in this volume explore the theoretical, methodological, and empirical dimensions of the fertility-mortality relationship. It includes several detailed case studies based on contemporary data from developing countries and on historical data from Europe and the United States.Table of ContentsFront Matter1 Introduction2 Effect of a Child's Death on Birth Spacing: A Cross-National Analysis3 The Impact of Infant and Child Mortality Risk on Fertility4 Learning and Lags in Mortality Perceptions5 The Impact of AIDS Mortality on Individual Fertility: Evidence from Tanzania6 Infant Mortality and the Fertility Transistion: Macro Evidence from Europe and New Findings from Prussia7 The Relationship Between Infant and Child Mortality and Fertility: Some Historical and Contemporary Evidence for the United States8 Fertility Response to Infant and Child Mortality in Africa with Special Reference to Cameroon9 The Relationship Between Infant and Child Mortality and Subsequent Fertility in Indonesia: 1971-199110 Micro and Macro Effects of Child Mortality on Fertility: The Case of India11 Child Mortality and the Fertility Transistion: Aggregated and Multilevel Evidence from Costa RicaIndex