A RELATIONAL GOMPERTZ MODEL OF MALE-FERTILITY - DEVELOPMENT AND ASSESSMENT

Brass has proposed a relational Gompertz model of female fertility whi ch, in combination with the standard fertility distribution developed by Booth, has proved useful in a range of applications, such as indire ct estimation, demographic modelling, and population projections. This paper develops a standard distribution of male fertility for use in c onjunction with the relational Gompertz model. The derivation of the s tandard takes advantage of the similarity between the shape of male an d female fertility distributions. It entails 'stretching' the female s tandard, so that it extends to age 80, and then transforming it, using the Gompertz model into a pattern which is more typical of male ferti lity distributions in the developing world. An assessment of this new standard by fitting the relational Gompertz model based on it to a ser ies of male fertility distributions from diverse populations, suggestS that it performs very well.