Abstract
We conducted a survey of male and female fertility in rural villages in The Gambia and compared men and women’s reports of recent pregnancy events in the aggregate and of children ever born for matched couples. Despite widespread polygyny and sex differences in fertility, men’s and women’s reports were similar. Small sex differences in reports of recent stillbirths and neonatal deaths were found. For matched couples, husbands reported 0.23 more children ever born than their wives on average, but discordant reporting had little effect on recent marital fertility rates. Modeling of discordant reports indicates that fertility reports are more likely to be underestimated by both men and women for their earliest marriages. Reliable fertility data can be collected from men in this population.
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Funding for this study was provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Dillon/Dunwalke Trust at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Saltonstall Fund at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and the Reproductive Health Programme of the Medical Research Council—The Gambia. We thank Rosalind Coleman for her contributions to the interpretation and presentation of the data and the reviewers and editors for their helpful comments on early drafts.
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Ratcliffe, A.A., Hill, A.G., Harrington, D.P. et al. Reporting of fertility events by men and women in rural Gambia. Demography 39, 573–586 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2002.0031
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2002.0031