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Hutterite fecundability by age and parity: Strategies for frailty modeling of event histories

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Demography

Abstract

Effective fecundability declines with age and parity. Furthermore, women differ in their effective fecundability: some women have persistently low or high monthly chances of live-birth conception. Estimates are presented concerning the magnitude of these effects in a natural-fertility population: 406 Hutterite women in North America who had 3,206 births, largely in the 1940s and 1950s. The estimates are based on models that incorporate the effects of persistent heterogeneity and that use the full information provided by multiple-spell duration data. In addition, hazards rather than probabilities are modeled, piecewise linear hazard functions are used, and age and parity effects are decomposed systematically. These methods permit the development of more elaborate models of changing fecundability and of heterogeneity in postpartum amenorrhea.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, 11794-4356, N.Y.

    Ulla Larsen

  2. Center for Health and Social Policy, Odense University, 5000, Odense C, Denmark

    James W. Vaupel

  3. Center for Demographic Studies, Duke University, 27706, Durham, N.C.

    James W. Vaupel

Authors
  1. Ulla Larsen
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  2. James W. Vaupel
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Additional information

Ulla Larsen was supported by Individual National Research Service Award AG-05466 from the National Institute on Aging. The authors thank Carol Ober for permission to use the Hutterite data and Paul David for providing a copy of the data tape. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 1990 annual meeting of the Population Association of America held in Toronto, and at the 1990 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, held in Washington, D.C.

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Larsen, U., Vaupel, J.W. Hutterite fecundability by age and parity: Strategies for frailty modeling of event histories. Demography 30, 81–102 (1993). https://doi.org/10.2307/2061864

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