Rural-urban fertility differentials: 1975.

Data was drawn primarily from the Pakistan Fertility Survey (PFS) conducted on a sample basis for the entire country in 1975 in an effort to investigate and identify any rural-urban differentials in fertility and to try to explain them in terms of socioeconomic and demographic factors. The Survey included a national random sample of 4949 ever-married women, aged 15-49 (1886 in urban areas and 3063 in rural areas). The measurement of current fertility showed that the total marital fertility rate was slightly higher in urban areas than in rural areas. The age-specific marital fertility rates of younger urban women are higher than those of rural women, meaning that even if they eventually have equal or fewer children than their rural counterparts, urban women are reproducing quite rapidly at younger ages. 1 possible explanation for this is the relatively shorter length of breastfeeding observed among urban women as compared to rural women. The age-specific marital fertility rates also seem to drop off more rapidly at later ages in urban areas. This may be related to the relatively higher use of efficient contraception at ages 29-39 observed in urban women. Urban women may be reproducing at a higher rate in the younger age groups, but they may also be resorting more frequently to contraceptive use in later years in an effort to curtail family size. The mean parity reported by 40-44 year-olds is 6.9 for both urban and rural women. Rural women showed evidence of having a higher incidence of child mortality and infant mortality, and this may have slightly increased the differential between "effective" completed family sizes (number of living children) in urban and rural areas.