‘Fertility Rate’

[D20]

I’ve seen this on charts in the news just this week. It might have been used widely before but I’ve not seen it as a measure before. My AIBU, before anyone asks, is I don’t think it should be ‘fertility rate’ when it seems to be describing number of births over a period of time. Calling it ‘fertility rate’ seems to be implying that women’s fertility is in decline. It may well be but it could also be choice/effective campaign against teen pregnancy/lack of decent men to procreate with?

It's a long standing way of charting the fertility of a nation, which is most easily recorded as the average number of children a woman will have over a lifetime. It's about grand trends, so you can see what shape a population will evolve into and what challenges are ahead - most pressingly for us, how do you support an inverted population pyramid.

Maybe the male journalists feel more comfortable referring to it as women issue and making it about fertility, rather than addressing the current surplus of feckless, shitty men.

I would have loved to have kids, but wouldn’t go it alone and over the years haven’t managed to find a decent one. I know there are some around, but I seem to have a knack for attracting cocklodgers, or just cockroaches.

Yes - the word usually means the quality of being fertile, but it's been the accepted demographic term for ages. I think it's just more succinct than any alternative phrase.

What’s wrong with birth rate, or does that mean something different?

But there is a problem with the fertility rate isn’t there? Sperm counts are dropping and lots more people are having to try IVF.

Birth rate is different, its the % of births compared to your Population. Fertility rate is the expected average number of children each woman will give birth to over her childbearing years. Both are used to measure long term trends, and they are often used together but show slightly different things.

So much bullshit, so little time.

So the birth rate charts the number of children being born per year but the fertility rate looks at the number of children women are having/ are expected to have over a lifetime.

The former would tell you how you would build an education system to support a spike in the birth rate one year but the latter steps back and tells you what things might look like as a whole society.

I think what is missing is there is no metric looking at the percentage of the population that is fertile.

So women of child breaking ages minus known infertility / all females

adult men minus those known as infertile / all males

But because people don’t necessarily know they are infertile until they try to conceive this is never going to be a very accurate indicator. Also are men who have had vasectomies then classified as infertile along with those who have low sperm count?

It will be affected by a larger older population too.

It's not that sort of fertility. It's fertility as in of babies actually produced, not ability to produce babies. We're mostly massively under-fertile compared to our ability to produce babies (I don't fancy having 15!), and the fertility statistics record those choices, mixed in with biological (in-)fertility

Eh? That's bs. The reality is much more nuanced.

@CloudsUnderwater can you elaborate a bit more please

Women have been working throughout history. What you call the "traditional nuclear family" is a very recent phenomenon and one restricted to specific socioeconomic groups.