RURAL-URBAN DISTRIBUTION OF FERTILITY IN SOUTH ISLAND, NEW ZEALAND.

The historic trend of rural and urban fertility in the South Island of New Zealand conforms closely to the experience over time of other world areas of similar socio-economic evolution, in particular Australia, the United States, and Western Europe. In the period from 1881 to 1936 a widespread decline occurred in both rural and urban fertility. There was a subsequent resurgence lasting to 1951 but thereafter, especially in the 1960's, a new phase of decline emerged. Meanwhile, an appreciable narrowing of rural-urban, inter-rural, and inter-urban fertility differences has taken place. Within the larger metropolitan centers, however, pronounced suburban variations are evident, a major contrast existing between the downtown pattern of low fertility and the outlying residential districts of high fertility. Both long term and recent shifts have been causatively linked with changing cultural attitudes deriving from the emergence of an overwhelmingly urban-dwelling society in place of the rural agricultural, pioneer society still predominant in 1881. Fertility differences at the regional and local level are explained by reference to a wide range of cultural variables, chiefly socio-economie status, religion, marital status, and other sociological circumstances peculiar to urban as distinct from rural ways of living.