The Measurement of Reproductivity

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Abstract
The measurement of the rate of population growth has attracted considerable attention in scientific literature of recent years. This is, no doubt, a result of the continual decline in the birth-rate which has formed the topic of innumerable articles in the popular press and elsewhere. Several attempts have been made to obtain a simple statistical measure of the reproductivity of a population at a particular time—that is, a measure of the extent to which a population will be replacing itself if current fertility and mortality continue indefinitely. It is the aim of this paper, in section 1,to discuss the simple approximate formulae that have been suggested; in section 2,to discuss some more elaborate and more efficient formulae; in section 3,to analyse the effect on the formulae of section 2 of a change in the proportions married at a given age; in section 4,to outline the male versus female rate anomaly; in section 5,to suggest a formula which avoids the anomaly; and finally, in section 6,to discuss the application of these formulae to Australian population statistics.

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