An Extension of the Conventional TFR

Abstract

The period-based total fertility rate is probably the most commonly used single measure of a population's fertility level, but it has the disadvantage that it only controls for the population's age distribution and not for any other subdividing feature, such as the parity distribution, ethnic composition, or educational attainment. This may lead the TFR to change because the population composition changes, even when the underlying fertility remains constant in each population sub-group. In the present contribution, we use elementary event-history methods to show how one can easily control the TFR against a change in the population's distribution across any selected subdivision. We use the data of the Romanian Gender and Generations Survey of 2005 to illustrate how this can be done.