The aim of this study was to describe the variation in marital fertility in Warri-Effurun in Nigeria and to describe an approach to population education and family planning suitable to the fertility patterns. The sample included 662 households of monogamously married women aged 15-49 years in 21 neighborhoods in Warri Effurun conurbation in Bendel State, a very fast growing urban center. Couples had to be in their first marriages and to have resided in the area for at least six months. Between 1963 and 1989, population increased from 55,254 to 117,442, a rate of 2.9%. Marital fertility was taken as the number of surviving children from approved legal sexual unions. The highest mean number of surviving children was 3.519 among those who first married between the ages of 15 and 19 years. 9.3% of women with seven or more children were married between the ages of 15 and 19 years. Women aged 40-49 years had the highest mean number of surviving children (5.3) and the largest number of pregnancies and live births. There were 10 neighborhoods that had higher average marriage ages and 10 neighborhoods with lower marriage ages. Neighborhoods with higher marriage ages had more migrants and were more elitist. Lower marriage age neighborhoods had more indigenous people with early marriages and early childbearing. The highest fertility was found in Midwest College, Nigerian Port Authority, Okumagba Layout, and Senior Staff Quarters, with later marriage and childbearing and a better educated population. The highest mean age of marriage was 28.45 years in the Nelson Obahor neighborhood, which also recorded 2.68 births and 2.65 surviving children, which was the lowest in the city. The lowest mean age of marriage was 20.04 in Pessu, which had 3.04 as the mean number of births, followed by 20.18 in Ogunnu, which had 4.64 births. The highest mean number of surviving children was 4.47 in Ajamogha and 4.0 in Senior staff quarters. The correlation between mean age of marriage and mean number of surviving children was very high. The recommendation was to plan population education and family planning services in neighborhoods with high fertility.
The author examines factors affecting the marked changes in population distribution that have occurred in Western industrialized countries since the end of World War II. During this period, urban and regional differences in fertility and mortality have declined and the significance of migration has increased. The change from migration to urban areas in the 1950s to counterurbanization in the 1970s and back to urban growth in the 1980s is summarized. These changes are then analyzed in the context of the changing demands of an evolving capitalist economic system.
"A classification of relatively self-contained functional regions is used to test for the existence of counterurbanization in Great Britain. It is shown that population deconcentration from Metropolitan to Freestanding Britain was underway during 1961-71 and increased in magnitude in 1971-81.... Reference to annual estimates of population, however, indicate that these counterurban shifts reached a peak in the early 1970s and that after the mid 1970s there was a significant narrowing of the range of growth rates along the metropolitan dimension. The early 1980s were characterized by a marked reduction in the rate of population loss from the larger metropolitan centres alongside a continuation of relatively rapid growth in the more rural parts of the country."
"Age-specific migration changes between 1977 and 1980 reveal several modifications in the pattern of population redistribution in the Federal Republic and suggest a major alteration of the West German internal migration system. In 1980, both the 30 to 49...and the 50+ year olds move (in the net) out of densely populated regions and into sparsely populated areas. A net out-migration occurs from the large, densely populated urban regions with strong and contemporary economic bases as well as from areas with structural economic problems. Densely populated regions lose more migrants while sparsely populated areas retain additional potential movers. Diverse explanations are suggested for these age-selective migration changes."
"The decade of the 1970s witnessed two new trends of major significance in U.S. population distribution, the concentration of 85 to 90 percent of the nation's population growth in the South and West, and the revival of growth in many nonmetropolitan parts of the country....However, the nonmetropolitan resurgence has relaxed somewhat in the 1980s. From 1980 to mid-1986, nonmetropolitan territory...had only a 4 percent growth in population compared with 6.4 percent for the nation as a whole and 7.2 percent for metropolitan territory. During the 1970s the same geographic areas had increases of 14.4, 11.4, and 10.5 percent respectively."
