Fertility expectations: a short cut or dead-end in predicting fertility

Abstract

Anyone who wants to describe, explain or predict short-term fertility trends, has to bear in mind the different types of fertility measures, and decide on the most suitable one for the purpose.Period fertility measures make it possible to feel the pulse of fertility alterations.Cohort-fertility measures will always give descriptions and explanations which will tend to lag behind what is going on at the moment.On the other hand, period measures cannot completely indicate changes of fertility patterns due to timing and spacing effects.As a result, the interpretations of fertility trends can be more dramatic with period measures than if we use completed cohort fertility measures.If we want to take advantage of each of the different measures one must search for a method which will predict cohort fertility.Roughly we have three basic ways in which completed cohort fertility can be estimated: 1) the fertility patterns of preceding cohorts 2) information about changes of independent variables and 3) expectations and plans for future births.In this paper we will use a survey (the Norwegian Fertility Survey 1977) and a follow-up study (births recorded among those same women for the period 1978-1982) to examine if an easy method is also a viable one.If so, this means that the responsibility of making fertility projections merely shifts from the fore caster to the women themselves. Fertility expectations and demographic analysesQuestions about future fertility have a long and solid tradition in fertility surveys.The same is true with regard to the criticism of that kind of question (Ryder, 1973; Blake, 1974; and Simons, 1978).The discussion has to some degree been a methodological one, focusing on the validity and the reliability of the different measures, but it has also debated the utility of measuring birth expectations.We will not initiate a further discussion on either topic.Instead, we will briefly summarize opportunities and results in analyzing fertility expecta tions.For this purpose we define fertility expectations as beliefs or ideas about future births.It can, for instance, be statements about the number of children desired or expected, the appropriate time for childbearing, how definitely women regard their fertility plans to be, and not least, if the respondents are both able and ready to answer questions about their own fertility intentions.Future fertility orientations have been measured in a lot of varieties, inter alia: desires, plans, intentions, ideals, preferences and expectations.Although they may happen to be quite similar, they are not necessarily identical (Ryder.1981).What we should bear in mind here, however, is a rough definition of future

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