Recent Fertility in Mexico: Measurement and Interpretation

Summary

Mexican fertility has remained at a high level (a crude birth rate of 42–46) in spite of rapid economic development and its concomitants: rising levels of urbanization, education, income, and female labour force participation, and falling levels of infant mortality and agricultural population, combined with rural-urban migration.

Data on child-woman ratios and children-ever-born statistics, for Mexico and each state, suggest that the constant crude birth rate is not masking age or region-specific declines in fertility.

Cross-section regressions are employed in an attempt to explain Mexico’s paradoxical fertility behaviour. Using measures of income, education, urbanization, occupational status, industrial composition, labour force participation, and the sex ratio, in a weighted log-linear form, a large portion of the variation in state adjusted child-woman ratios is explained by the ‘demographic transition’ variables. The only two which might possibly explain the trend in Mexican fertility are the income variable and the sex ratio, which have positive influences on Mexican fertility in 1960 and 1970.

Notes

Earlier drafts of this paper were improved substantially by the comments of Simon Kuznets, Harvard University, and Mark Rosenzweig and T. Paul Schultz, Yale University. I also received capable research assistance from Jose Antonio Ocampo. Any remaining errors are due to some sinister force.

This research was supported by grant No. 740-0063 from the Ford Foundation.