Item Detail
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11887
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0
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0
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English
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Fertility Change in Utah
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Salt Lake City, UT
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University of Utah
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Ph.D. diss.
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"Since the mid-1800s, when Utah was settled by the Mormon pioneers, Utah fertility has exceeded U.S. fertility and the pronatalist influence of the Mormon Church has been credited with producing this differential. However, Utah fertility has also responded to social and economic change. From the late 1800s to the mid-1960s, Utah's fertility trends generally paralleled those of the United States. Despite the long-term similarity in fertility trends, after 1968 there was a striking divergence in the Utah and U.S. birth rates. The U.S. birth rate generally continued its post-1960 decline while the Utah birth rate increased. The purpose of this research was to explain this divergence. Because birth rates are influenced by changes in the age composition of populations, it was necessary to control for the entry of the "baby boom" females into their ages of highest fecundity. Standardized rates showed that most of the increase in the Utah birth rate was due to the changing age composition of the population. However, there was also a real divergence in actual period fertility between Utah and the U.S. as a whole. Between 1968 and 1975 the Utah total fertility rate showed a minimal, but absolute, increase while the U.S. total fertility rate showed a substantial decline. Multiple standardization was used to disaggregate the relative contributions of changes in marital status, marital fertility, and nonmarital fertility to changes in total fertility. Between 1960 and 1968 when total fertility declined, changes in marital status made a greater relative contribution in Utah than in the U.S. Nevertheless, reduced marital fertility was the major factor which accounted for declining fertility in both populations. Between 1968 and 1975, reduced marital fertility was again the major factor in the U.S. fertility decline. In Utah, literally all of the increase in the total fertility rate was due to increased marital fertility. Indeed, changes in Utah marital status and nonmarital fertility counteracted what would have otherwise been an even larger increase in the Utah total fertility rate." [Author's abstract]