Fertility indicators
In the years around 2020, approximately 800 children are born
annually in Greenland. When fertility is calculated on small
populations, all derived demographic measures, which are only slightly
more sophisticated than the ‘birth rate’ (number of live births per 1000
inhabitants) will be heavily affected by random variations. To reduce
the influence of calendar effects, demographic measures are calculated
at age x, for several subsequent years below. This calculation assumes
that there is not too great a difference in the size of the mothers
cohorts.
Women’s fertile ages are generally assumed to be
between the ages of 15-49. 96 per cent of all Greenlandic birth giving
mothers are aged 18-42.
Figure 1a shows the annual number of
live births since 1950. Especially in the 1960s, many children were born
due to extremely high fertility, which can be seen in figure 1b. In the
latter half of the 1960s, total fertility dropped sharply to around 2½
children per woman. Over the past 10 years, total fertility has fallen
further to around 2.1 children per woman.
Figur 1a Antal levendefødte
kilde: Statistikbanken
Figur 1b Samlet fertilitet
kilde: Statistikbanken
Indhold - fertilitetsmål
Summarisk fertilitet
Generel fertilitet
Regionalt
fertilitetsindeks
Aldersbetinget og samlet
fertilitet
Calculationbase
As base for calculations of demographic indicators, Statistics
Greenland provides access to very detailed tables in Greenland’s
Statistics Bank, including, for example, a Population
Account:
https://bank.stat.gl/BEECALC2
The table
BEEFERTR contains detailed information on age and place of birth of
the women who gave birth, distributed among the same
geographical-administrative units as the regional population
accounts:
https://bank.stat.gl/BEECALCR2
It is
divided into the following geographical-administrative
units:municipalities, districts, localities by size, Nuuk, City/village,
The whole country
The divisions have been made so that the
sum in each group is equal to the sum for the whole country (Total).
Summarisk fertilitetskvotient
“The Birth rate is the simplest indicator and is calculated as
the annual number of live births per 1000 inhabitants.However, this
denominator also include men as well as women below and above the
childbearing age (15-49 years), as a comparison of the Birth rate
between two populations can show differences which are solely due to a
different proportion of women of childbearing age .”
source:
Matthiessen, Poul Chr.: fertility in Den Store Danske on
lex.dk.Retrieved 11 August 2021
Due to the very limited
information required for calculation, the target is available for
virtually all countries of the world, see: World Bank
In 2021, the Birth rate is
calculated to be 13.5 for people born in Greenland and 13.6 for people
born outside Greenland, living in Greenland. Only 1/3 of people born
outside Greenland are women, while there are roughly the same number of
men and women among those born in Greenland. Therefore, the measure is
not suitable for comparisons broken down by place of birth. The same
applies to regional comparisons, as foreign-born people largely live in
Nuuk.
Statistics Greenland recommends that age-specific/total
fertility be used for fertility comparisons between areas or over
time.
kilde: Statistikbanken
Generel fertilitetskvotient
“The general fertility rate is defined as the number of live
births per 1000 women of childbearing age. Although the denominator of
this measure only includes persons who are assumed to be able to give
birth, the measure depends on the age distribution among women. A
particularly high value of the general fertility quotient can thus be
partly or wholly due to a large proportion of women in the 25-34 age
group, where the fertility level is higher than in the other age
groups.”
source:
Matthiessen, Poul Chr.: fertility in Den Store Danske on
lex.dk.Retrieved 11 August 2021
In 2021, the general
fertility rate is calculated to 58,4 for persons born in Greenland and
59,6 for persons born outside Greenland, residing in Greenland. The
steep decline in fertility around 1970 led to a sharp drop in the annual
number of live births, so sharp that just 10 years later the birth
cohorts had halved in size. The birth cohorts before the fertility
decline are referred to as ‘the big cohorts’ and it is extremely
important to have comparable measures that the age component is
standardized.
Statistics Greenland recommends that
age-specific/total fertility be used for fertility comparisons between
areas or over time.
kilde: Statistikbanken
Aldersbetinget & samlet fertilitet
“The age-specific fertility quotients are obtained by calculating
the number of live births per 1000 women in each 1-year or 5-year age
group.The total fertility rate indicates the number of live births that
1000 women would give birth to during their fertile period if they gave
birth in accordance with given age-specific fertility rates and lived
through the entire fertile period.”
source:
Matthiessen, Poul Chr.: fertility in Den Store Danske on
lex.dk.Retrieved 11 August 2021
The age-specific fertility quotients and the sum of these over the
fertile ages, which is called total fertility, are the most important
measures for describing the fertility of a population.
Chart
2a shows these calculated on a 2-year and 5-year basis, respectively. It
can be seen that the importance of random annual variations is
significantly reduced when the calculation basis is
larger.
Chart 2b shows the development in total fertility
over the last r CONST_taar-1995
years. Since 2010, the
total fertility level has been around 2.1 children per woman, which is
the fertility level a population must have in order to reproduce itself,
when migrations are disregarded.
Figur 2a Aldersbetinget fertilitet
Figur 2b Samlet fertilitet
The capital and the main residences are educational cities, which is
why they attract young people in education, who have lower fertility
than women of the same age who live in the smaller
residences.
Women who live in the smaller settlements have
children earlier than women in education. They both start and end
earlier.
Figur 3a Aldersgrupper
Figur 3b 2022
Regionalt fertilitetsindeks
The regional fertility index is calculated by indirect
standardization and expresses the ratio between the actual number of
births in a region and the expected number of births if the women in the
region give birth to children in accordance with the national
average.
On demographic method, see Teoretisk Demografi, PC Matthiessen
1970
This calculation shows that the fertility level is
fairly constant in the country’s municipalities, the size-grouped
localities and most districts, especially when a 5-year average forms
the basis of the calculations.
However, Qaanaaq and
Ittoqqortoormiit stand out significantly with a fertility level that is
similar to 2 and 2½ times the national average, with significantly
greater uncertainty due to the size of the calculation base.