Talk:Fertility rate
Definition
[edit]The article defines fertility rate as the average number of child births per woman. Is this the actual average among all women, or is it the potential number of children per woman if all women lived to the end of their childbearing years? The following sentence and the article on sub-replacement fertility suggest the latter. If it were the former, then replacement rate should have been exactly 2, in my opinion - if 2 is the actual number of children per woman, then these two replace their two parents (assuming the male and female populations are roughly the same size). See also [1]. Also, if births are counted rather than children, then the 0.1 added to 2 (which is 5%) should be affected by child mortality, which ranges dramatically from 20% to nearly 0 between countries, between rural and urban regions, etc.. I was wondering if someone has an accurate definition of fertility rate and replacement rate, as I've seen different definitions.--Doron 06:36, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Could someone distinguish total fertility rate and general fertility rate?