[Socioeconomic differentials in the decline of fertility in Costa Rica, 1960-1970 (author's transl)]. / El descenso de la fecundidad en Costa Rica y sus diferencias socioeconomicas, 1960-1970.

PIP: Principal source for investigation on fertility are birth registrations, a source which is very often deficient by omission in Latin America. This situation has prompted the development of more specific methods which use other, and more reliable, information. One of these is the own-children method, which allows estimations based on population censuses. This article presents an investigation on the process of fertility decline in Costa Rica between 1960 and 1970, using the own-children method applied to data from the 1973 census. Costa Rica was selected to evaluate this method since the country's birth registers are relatively reliable. Total fertility rate was higher than that estimated through birth registration; in certain rural regions it was 10-15% higher, possibly because, in those particular regions, omission of birth registration was higher than the national level. Towards the end of the 1950s, half of the women in fertile age were using contraception; the decline in fertility began in the middle and high social classes, and in urban areas. Later, at the end of the 1960s, the decline in fertility reached urban proletarian groups, and the illiterate rural population. It seems obvious that these fertility changes are due to the insertion of families into the system of production, meaning that modernization and education have created a climate favorable to smaller families. These findings are consistent with available information on changes of attitude toward family planning, heavily promoted by the National Family Planning Program begun in 1968. In 1970 the steepest decline in fertility was noted in those groups which, despite the decline, still had the highest fertility rate; by 1977 a tendency toward stabilization was registered.^ieng