Effects of Marital Fertility and Nuptiality on Fertility Transition in Iran, 1976–2006

In any study of fertility, marital status is important to the extent that it affects three stages of reproduction: intercourse, conception and parturition (VandenHeuvel and McDonald 1994, p. 69). It is generally assumed that early marriage is associated with a high proportion eventually marrying. Rising mean ages at marriage and rising percentages single are, on the other hand, associated with declines in annual measures of fertility. Later marriage reduces the total duration of fecund exposure to sexual activity, and shifts it to the older ages of lower fecundity (Smith 1983, pp. 476–80). Generally, there is an inverse relationship between the number of children ever born and age at marriage at the level of the individual couple (Knodel 1983, p. 78). The rapid falls in fertility in East Asia (Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong SAR and Taiwan) and in some countries of Southeast Asia (Thailand, Singapore) were very much associated with rising age at first marriage. In the first decades of fertility decline in these countries, falls in the proportions married accounted for well over 50% of the overall fall in fertility. Ages at first marriage for women in all of these countries have risen to quite high levels with only small proportions marrying under the age of 25. In contrast, the fertility decline in Indonesia (McNicoll and Singarimbun 1981) was due primarily to falls in marital fertility with only relatively modest increases in age at first marriage. Thus, the question arises to what extent the observed fertility decline in Iran has been associated with rise in age at marriage or to lower marital fertility due to the use of contraceptives. This is the main focus of this chapter.

An earlier version of the this paper was published as ANU Demography Working Paper (Abbasi-Shavazi 2000).