The fertility of negroes without southern rural experience: A re-examination of the 1960 GAF study findings with 1967 SEO Data

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Abstract
A major finding of the 1960 ‘Growth of American Families’ (GAF) study was that whites and blacks without southern rural experience had similar fertility. This paper reports on a re-examination of this finding with a substantially larger black sample. Data from the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity demonstrated that the residence background classification utilized in the GAF study defeated, in part, the attempt to remove the effects of rural experience on fertility. Indigenous urban blacks had 25% higher fertility than indigenous urban whites. The fertility of urban black migrants out of the rural South was sharply curtailed in contrast to those remaining in the rural South. Although urban blacks of southern rural background had nominally higher fertility than indigenous urban blacks, the difference was neither statistically nor substantively significant. These results demand a re-ordering of the interpretation of the impact that migration has on urban black fertility and the white-black differential in fertility.

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