Evidence of increasing natural fertility in Taiwan

Abstract

A comparison of the age‐specific marital fertility experience of three successive cohorts in Taiwan indicates that the later cohorts have experienced progressively higher rates of natural fertility at each age from 15–19 to 35–39. Their fecundability is correspondingly higher and post‐partum sterility, shorter. These changes in natural fertility levels occurred almost simultaneously with recorded changes in health and nutrition levels. These findings support the hypothesis that during the process of modernization and the fertility transition, the level of natural fertility increases, potentially as a result of improvements in health and nutrition, and changes in lactation practices. It is the net effect of increases in natural fertility on the one hand and deliberate fertility regulation on the other, that determines the course of fertility over time, especially at early stages of modernization and the fertility transition.