Japan and Portugal: women born in 1980 had almost the same number of children, but 28% and 11% stayed childless
On average 1.48 and 1.55 children per woman. Mothers alone averaged 2.0 children in Japan and 1.7 in Portugal: where more women stay childless, those who do have children have more of them. The same average hides different families.
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Similar averages of children per woman coexist with a large gap in childlessness in the same generation. The average blends women with no children and women who had them.
The bars show the childless share, not children per woman. The two generation averages are in the text and in the values below.
- Japan — Completed cohort fertility children per woman; year = birth year of women
1.478 (1980)
- Japan — Childlessness by cohort % of women; year = birth year of women
27.6 (1980)
- Portugal — Completed cohort fertility children per woman; year = birth year of women
1.546 (1980)
- Portugal — Childlessness by cohort % of women; year = birth year of women
11.4 (1980)
Latest generation born since 1970 shared by both countries and both series. Averages differ by at most 0.10 children; childlessness differs by at least 8 percentage points. Pairs with the largest gap are selected first; each country appears once.
These HFD generations were followed to at least age 44. HFD cautions that reconstructed distributions by number of children can be unstable and depend on migration assumptions. Children per mother = children per woman / (1 − childless share): a derived estimate, not a separate census count.
A question for this picture
What kinds of families disappear when we describe a country by just one fertility average?