Tempo-Adjusted Fertility

Tempo-adjusted fertility is the Bongaarts-Feeney correction of the period total fertility rate that removes the distortion introduced when the timing of childbearing changes. When women collectively postpone (or advance) births, the conventional period total fertility rate is artificially depressed (or inflated) even if the number of children women ultimately have is unchanged; the adjustment inflates each birth-order-specific rate by a factor based on the changing mean age at childbearing to recover an undistorted measure of fertility quantum.