Western Fertility in Mid-Transition: Fertility and Nuptiality in the United States and Selected Nations At the Turn of the Century

Abstract

The demographic transition in Western nations did not take place in a uniform manner. Particular exceptions were the United States and France. New data sources and recent developments in estimation techniques have made possible estimates of age-specific overall and marital fertility rates for the United States at the turn of the century. Both the two census parity-increment method and own-children methods were applied to the public use sample of the 1900 census and to the special sample of the 1910 census taken and analyzed in conjunction with the 1940 census. New estimates of age-specific fertility were made for the periods 1900-1910 and 1905-1910 for the whole United States and for whites, native whites, foreign-born whites, and blacks. Notable was the low maritalfertility among young American women (that is, those aged 20-29). Comparisons to datafor selected European countries from this period suggest that this was uncommon, except in France. Measures offemale nuptiality also reveal that the United States had earlier and more extensive marriage, again similar to France and unlike other Western European nations. The peculiar nature of both marital fertility and nuptiality in both the United States and France at the turn of the century is likely related to the extended period over which both nations experienced fertility declines during the nineteenth century.