The Effects of Changing Mortality on Natality: Some Estimates from a Simulation Model

Abstract

A computer model, "REPSIM," which simulates the reproductive history of a hypothetical cohort of women, was applied to study the effects of improved survival on natality and to derive quantitative estimates of these effects. In the reported experiments, varying mortality levels for the women, their infants and their husbands were postulated, the particular schedules being derived from United Nations model life tables. The simplifications introduced into these experiments included the elimination of divorce and of any voluntary limitation of births, as well as assumptions that marriage probabilities did not change with different survival patterns and that all husbands were exactly 7 years older than their wives. Therefore, these experiments eliminated any effects that changing survival rates have on these aspects of marriage.