Declining fertility in Nepal

This article relies on data from the 1991 Nepal Fertility, Family Planning, and Health Survey (NFFPHS) and the 1996 Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS) to assess trends in fertility in Nepal. The NFFPHS shows heaping at ages 5, 8, 10, and 12 years and a larger proportion of infants. The NLSS shows a different pattern of misreporting of youth and a stronger but similar pattern of age heaping as the NFFPHS for adults. Children ever born by maternal age indicates a degree of completeness and the deletion by older women of deceased children and married children living outside the household. Findings suggest less complete reporting in the NLSS. Age-specific fertility rates are calculated based on birth histories (BH) and the own-children (OC) method based on life tables. Findings indicate that BH and OC estimates of the cumulative fertility rate (CFR) derived from the NLSS and the NFFPHS were comparable for estimating trends in the total fertility rate (TFR). The trends from the two data sets overlapped fairly well during 1983-89. Fertility trends by single years of age showed considerably annual fluctuations due to age misreporting. The CFR and TFR for aggregated time periods showed little or no decline for the earlier 5-year period, a steeper decline in the second period, and variations in trends by data set for the third period from 1983 to 1989. One curve showed no decline and the other showed fertility decline. Fitting a straight line to the trend for 1977-91 shows that CFR declined by 1.61 children from 5.29 children in 1977 to 3.68 children in 1991. TFR declined by 1.90 children from 6.68 children in 1977 to 4.78 children in 1991. The author cautions that the point of fertility decline was not determined exactly, but data suggest that decline occurred around 1980, and the rate was fast thereafter. TFR declined by 2.70 children in urban areas and 1.83 children in rural areas.