Fertility and longevity on the American frontier: Contexts of post-reproductive maternal survival.

• In Event: Sociology of Population Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 2. Reproductive Health

Abstract

The search for a biological mechanism linking maternal fertility and longevity has been a central concern of biodemography since the early twentieth century. Although numerous studies propose fertility–longevity tradeoffs, empirical findings remain mixed, often attributed to the embedding of fertility and mortality within social and institutional environments. Where prior work has often treated this embedding as a challenge, we instead approach environment and biological processes as theoretically entwined. Using Utah as an analytic case characterized by high fertility and low mortality under stable institutional influence, we use the Utah Population Database to analyze linked fertility and mortality histories for 171,784 Utah women born between 1830 and 1940. Results indicate that parity exhibits little systematic association with late-life mortality, whereas fertility timing and spacing become increasingly associated with longevity in post-1890 birth cohorts. We further examine offspring availability in late life as a familial context connecting fertility and mortality. While the presence of proximate adult children after age fifty is associated with lower overall mortality risk, age-specific analyses reveal elevated risk at younger old ages and protective associations at advanced ages. Together, these findings demonstrate that fertility and mortality are best understood as biological processes expressed within historically specific familial and institutional contexts, rather than as outcomes governed by a singular biological mechanism.

Authors

• Jason Paul Bonham, University of Chicago

• Jenny Trinitapoli, University of Chicago