The Shaping of a Settler Fertility Transition: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century South African Demographic History Reconsidered

Using South African Families(SAF), a new database of settler genealogies, we provide for the first time, a description of female marital fertility in South Africa from 1700 to 1909. We find high and stable levels of fertility up to the mid-nineteenth century, typical of a pre-transition population, after which fertility declines. The usual correlates of a decline in fertility, namely, later starting and earlier stopping of childbearing, together with increased spacing between births, can be seen from the second half of the nineteenth century. The South African fertility transition mirrors to a large extent the pattern found in other settler communities, aswell as the European experience despite the somewhat different economic and social circumstances of the country, in particular relative to Europe.