The standardized TFR

Jan Hoem, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Cornelia Muresan, University Babes-Bolyai of Cluj

The period-based Total Fertility Rate is probably the most commonly used single measure of a population’s fertility level, but it regularly meets with disdain from professional demographers because it only controls for the population’s age distribution but not for any other subdividing feature, such as the population’s parity distribution or ethnic composition, or the educational attainment of population members. In the present contribution we show how one can improve upon the usual TFR by standardizing for the distribution across any selected subdivision of the population provided the information is available. We use the data of the Romanian Gender and Generations Survey to illustrate how this can be done, and in the process we illuminate limits to the usefulness of a data set of this size order. [The paper will be uploaded later.]