Some aspects of mating and fertility in the West Indies

ABSTRACT

This paper deals with certain problems in fertility analysis in the West Indies that have their origin in 2 characteristics of the populations involved the diversity of family forms and the imbalance between the sexes. Considerations of the main features of these family types, in terms of a fourfold classification as well as in terms of the threefold classification adopted at recent censuses (single, common law and married), show that many techniques relied on in the study of fertility among European populations are inapplicable to West Indian populations. The limited data available permit only rough estimates of the rates of formation of different types of unions but these emphasize that formal marriage usually takes place late in the childbearing period, generally after the couple has had one or more children, that the formation of keeper unions begins considerably earlier and that the common law type is a transitional state between the looser keeper union and the state of marriage. There seems to be no chance of studying fertility differentials among the several family types in terms of reproduction rates. Census data however provide 3 measures for this purpose, all of which show that fertility is highest for the married type and lowest for the single or keeper union. These differentials seem to run counter to the more usual pattern of fertility differential which show fertility lowest among groups of high socio-economic standing. Imbalance between the sexes is of importance primarily in the problem of arriving at satisfactory indices of fertility, though it may also have contributed somewhat to the establishment of the pattern of low marriage rates. Wide discrepancies between rates based on males and rates based on females appear, both in respect of fertility levels at given points of time and in respect of fertility trends. These discrepancies seem closely related to the imbalance between the sexes in the reproductive age span. Under these conditions the use of joint G.R.R's clearly offers a more realistic measure of fertility than rates based on either sex (SUMMARY)