Chapter 6: Fertility
Fertility is one of three basic demographic main features provided by the Census, the others being mortality and migration. Fertility and related statistics are based on questions asked to women in their reproductive ages, 15 - 49 years of age. While the other census questions were answered by the heads of households, the questions on fertility were supposed to be answered directly by the women.
All the women in the age group 15 – 49 years of age were asked the following question:
Have you given any live birth?
Yes
No
For those who answered “yes”, there were some more questions asked:
How many children born alive to you
Were with you during the census night (by sex of child)?
Were elsewhere during the census night (by sex of child)?
Have died?
These questions thus provide number of children ever born and the specification was made in order to minimize the risk that children away from home or dead would not be accounted for.
The section on fertility was completed by the question:
How old were you when you had your first live birth?
6.1. Number of women at reproductive ages
Women aged 15 – 49 years of age were asked about number of children ever born and surviving. As fertility has been high in the past the number of women that reaches reproductive ages continues to increase. Figure 6.1 shows the changes between the 1995 and the 2005 censuses. The population projections (presented in chapter 9) demonstrate that the female population 15-49 years will continue to increase in absolute numbers, and as a share of the total female population. The share will go up from current 2005 level of 49.6 percent to 51.4 in 2010 and 52.6 percent in 2020.
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6.2. Number of Children Ever Born and Living
Despite high fertility, almost 38 percent in 2005 (35 percent in 1995) of all women in reproductive ages have not given birth (table 6.1), and aHmong younger women (15-24) 70 percent were childless. For women aged 30 and above the proportion of childlessness was 9 percent.
Table 6.1 also shows that about 10 percent of women aged 15-19 have given birth to at least one child and this early childbearing has increased to 50 percent aHmong women aged 20-24. By the end of the reproductive period about 92 percent of all women have given birth to at least one child.
For reproductive women with children the most common number of children was 1 to 4 children, while those who had more than 4 children constituted about 17 percent of all reproductive women. Those women with 9 and more children were only 2 out of 100 compared with 4.5 in 1995.
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The average children ever born (mean
CEB) were 2.2 children for the whole
country, varying from 0.1 children for women at age 15- 49 to 4.6 children
at age 45-49. The mean CEB varies from 1.3 in Vientiane Capital to 2.9 in
Huaphanh and Xaysomboon SR, and from 1.6 in urban areas to 2.7 in rural
areas without road.
The following table provides data on mean CEB for the largest ethnic groups. Hmong people have the highest average number of children ever born. The Hmong population has also increased with 3.7 percent per year from 1995 to 2005.
The average number of children ever born to women aged 45-49 years was 4.6 (5.6 in 1995). As this age group marks the end of a woman’s reproductive period this number reflects the fertility performance and is thus an indicator of completed fertility.
The following table is a summary of Table 6.3. Of 3 047 248 children ever born 2 746 397 were still living at the day of the census. Thus 10 percent of the children ever born had died.
6.3. Number of Children and Education
Table 6.1 shows the number of women by age group and number of children born alive by level of education. The most obvious impact seems to be that more educated women have fewer children. Less than 5 percent of the women with secondary school had more than 4 children compared to 28 percent of the women without schooling. Childbearing for women with education is also postponed to higher ages.
6.4. Age at First Live Birth
An important demographic indicator is age at first birth. Early start in childbearing may result in higher number of children ever born compared to later starts. Table 6.2 shows the frequencies of the age of woman when she has her first live birth. For the country as a whole the most common age is 20-24 years. The median age at first birth is 20 years, with small provincial variations, lowest in Huaphanh and Xaysomboon SR (19 years) and highest in Vientiane Capital and Champasack (21 years). In rural areas with access to road 15-19 years are more common. In rural areas with access to road 28 percent start childbearing in ages 15-19 compared to 31 percent in rural areas without access to road and 16 percent in urban areas. Very few women got a child before the age of 15, but it is more common in rural than in urban areas.
The median age at first birth also shows relatively small variations. For Lao and Akha it is 23 years, for Phouthay, Lue, Khmou, Makong 22 years and for Tai, Katang and Hmong it is 21 years.
The proportion of women aged 15-19 years who had given birth is 10 percent as Table 6.1 indicates. It is highest in Xaysomboon SR (18 percent), Huaphanh (15 percent) and Sekong (14 percent) and lowest in Vientiane Capital (4 percent), Champasack (6 percent) and Luangnamtha (9 percent). Among the major ethnic groups one can find high proportions for Hmong (21 percent), Makong (19 percent), Katang (16 percent) and Tai (12 percent) but lower than the national average for Lao (6 percent), Lue (8 percent), Akha and Phouthay (9 percent).
6.5. Adolescent fertility trends
The proportion of women who gave birth before the age of 20 years was 24 percent among women currently at age 45-49 and increased to 33 percent at age 30-34 and then declined to 31 percent among women currently at age 20-24. This trend of increasing adolescent fertility, observed e.g. in the 2000 reproductive health survey, does not seem to be so clear.
6.6. Estimated Number of Children
As mentioned before a question was asked to women aged 15-49 about the number of live births during the past 12 months. This question was not asked in 1995 census. However the number of children born was then obtained by adding the number of children aged 0 years on the day of the census and the number of children who died during the last twelve months at the age of 0 years. The results from the 2005 census are presented in Table 6.4.
About 114 000 children were reported to be born during the last twelve months. The sex ratio at birth was 104. The number of children is somewhat lower than in 1995. Both figures are believed to be too low due to underreporting. Demographic analysis made suggests that in 2005 the annual number of births was about 195 000 (see chapter 9 on population projections).
6.7. Fertility
Fertility has fallen during the intercensal period. Figure 6.3 shows the enumerated total Lao population by age and sex in 2005 and suggests that some 10 years ago fertility began to drop markedly. A similar result was established in the analysis of the 1995 census.
It is apparent that at the national level as well as at provincial levels there must have been a marked fertility transition during the past 10 years or so. As one would expect, the transition seems to begin in Vientiane Capital. Here the fertility drop began some 20 or 25 years ago. Roughly speaking, there is a 10-year time lag between onsets of fertility declines in urban and rural areas.
Estimated age-specific fertility rates for Lao PDR are shown in figure 6.4. These estimates are based partly on reported live births during the 12 months preceding the census, partly on the census age-distribution. The age-specific rate would give a total fertility rate of 4.5. The mean age of the fertility schedule is 28 years. This, roughly speaking, is also the mean age at childbearing.
An age-specific rate is calculated as the number of births in a year to mothers of a specific age (usually 5-year age group) per woman of the same age.
The table below summarizes the demographic estimates on fertility since 1995 with estimates up to 2020.
Any estimate of TFR is uncertain. In the 1995 census report TFR was estimated at 5.6 (alternatively 5.4). However, when reconciling the two censuses it seems that 5.5 for 1995 are too high. This estimate is now downgraded to 5.0. The estimated fertility trend from 1995 to 2005 is well in line with other estimates. The Reproductive Health Survey thus estimated a rate of 4.9 for year 2000.
6.8. Fertility at Provincial Level
As expected there are large differences between provinces. The estimates are based on the current reproductive tempo and quantum of women aged 20-29 years. This approach is often taken in indirect estimation of fertility. These estimates have been upgraded so that they are in agreement with the previously given estimate of TFR for Lao PDR in 2005, namely 4.5. The corresponding estimate for Lao PDR based on women aged 20-29 was 4.2. The discrepancy between the two estimates is reasonably small (7 percent). A few comments are in place. Indirect estimation methods (with few exceptions) build on the assumption that variables are stationary.
In the case of fertility this means that women below age 30, say, all share the same fertility schedule. Such an assumption will always stand invalidated by nature. Hence, whichever method is chosen imprecision is necessarily imputed. Moreover, the reported number of children ever born is almost always affected by some underreporting. It is reasonable, then, to upgrade the provincial original estimates by a factor of 1.07 to reflect partly adjustment for underreporting, partly to bring it into balance with the previously given estimate (TFR = 4.5). The results are presented in the following table.
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It will be noted that there are considerable differences between provinces. Vientiane Capital is close to the level of reproduction whereas Huaphanh and Xaysomboon SR have TFR levels of 6.4 (a very high level of reproduction). The table below gives the estimates together with number of children ever born.
Contents:
- Population Size and structure
- Population Distribution and Migration Household Characteristics
- Education and Literacy
- Activity and Labor Force
- Fertility
- Mortality
- Housing Characteristics
- Population Projections
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