AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL FERTILITY IN DECLINE. By ALAN GRAY. A thesis submitted for the ...

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AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL FERTILITY IN DECLINE.
By
ALAN GRAY.
A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
at the Research School of Social Sciences,
Australian National University.
December 1983
This thesis is the original work of the author as a Research
Scholar in the Department of Demography of the Research
School of Social Sciences at the Australian National
University between March 1981 and December 1983.
4(cuyv
Alan Gray.
For Imme and Andrew, Edith and Kathleen
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
This study was undertaken on a Commonwealth Public Service
Postgraduate Award paid by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. I used
fieldwork grants from the Australian National University, the Commonwealth
Department of Health and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
To these institutions I express my gratitude for their support.
My supervisors Dr. Peter McDonald, Dr. Lado Ruzicka, Dr. Leonard
Smith and Dr. Elspeth Young contributed much to this thesis at various
times and in various ways and I owe them all a sincere debt of gratitude.
Elspeth's cheerful and willing advice helped form my research plan and set
it on course. Peter's incisive comments, careful and prompt reading of
drafts, assistance with the solution of practical and methodological
problems and his constant availability to discuss progress were invaluable
and missed after his departure from the University earlier this year. I
am particularly grateful for Peter's later contributions as an informal
adviser-at-a-distance. Len was formally a supervisor only during the
latter half of my research program but was an adviser before that. His
knowledge of the Aboriginal population from his previous research set
exacting standards which I could only strive to achieve. To Lado, who was
my supervisor from beginning to end, I owe special thanks for his great
support during the writing of this thesis. His perceptive remarks and
insightful suggestions helped clarify many issues.
Fieldwork undertaken during the course of the study would have been
impossible without the collaboration of Alberta Aubrey, Gwen Button, Kaye
Clark, Fiona Combo, Rose Harris, Glenice Hayes, Matilda House, Natalie
Sleigh, Millie Taylor, Lorelle Watcho and Margaret Williams. I thank them
for their careful work. Among others, too numerous to mention, who gave me
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assistance during my fieldwork I would especially like to thank Stan
Butler, Donella Byrnes, Grahame Denner, Roslyn Douglas, Marion Drennan,
Fred Gobbo, Cliff Harris, Rosemary Howell, Audrey Kinnear, Marie Muller,
Herbert Parker, Les Stewart, Faith Thomas and Mike West.
Gloria Brennan, Helen Boyle, Peter Byatt, John Done, S.
Krishnamoorthy, Bill Oakes, the late David Penny, Janice Reid, Mike
Salloom, Herbert Sims, Fiona Stanley and Neil Thomson all contributed
advice, encouragement and assistance at various times.
I am grateful to Professor Annette Hamilton for her permission to
refer to data from some of her research in Arnhem Land, and the New South
Wales Department of Health for its permission to use data from the
demographic baseline study of the Aboriginal population of New South Wales
which I carried out for the Department.
Valerie Lyons drew the diagrams skilfully and carefully, and I
appreciate her assistance.
Finally, my special thanks go to Wendy Cosford, who not only read and
carefully edited two drafts of the thesis from start to end, but who
uncomplainingly and graciously shared her office with my temperament for
three years.
Canberra, December 1983.
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ABSTRACT.
Studies published during the 1960s and early 1970s noted that the
Aboriginal population of Australia had both high fertility and high
mortality relative to the rest of the Australian population, and envisaged
rapid growth of the small Aboriginal component of the total population. It
was not until the late 1970s that signs appeared that Aboriginal fertility
must have fallen dramatically during the earlier part of the decade.
Because of deficiencies in quantitative description of the Aboriginal
population, the nature and extent of the apparent fertility decline was
unknown.
Using data from population censuses and other sources, this study
firstly establishes the extent of fertility decline and coincidental
changes in mortality, noting geographical variations where they exist. The
total fertility rate of the Aboriginal population has fallen by over forty
per cent in a decade, after earlier slow increase to a plateau of high
fertility during the 1960s. The decline has taken place in all
geographical areas but has not been uniform across age groups: in fact,
there has been little change in the high age specific birth rates of young
Aboriginal women. Coinciding with fertility decline, there has been a
marked reduction of Aboriginal infant mortality, but adult mortality
remains extremely high not only relative to the rest of the Australian
population, but in absolute terms. It seems unlikely that the Aboriginal
population will in the future grow at a more rapid rate than the rest of
the Australian population.
The mechanism of fertility decline was the provision of contraceptive
advice to Aboriginal women through rapidly-expanding health services in
Aboriginal communities from the end of the 1960s. Health professionals
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hoped that assisting Aboriginal women to limit their families would be a
meaningful contribution towards reducing socio-economic privation. The
expansion of health services was also associated with the reduction in
infant and childhood mortality rates, so that both fertility and mortality
decline shared a common mechanism.
The attitudes and motivations of Aboriginal women to fertility and
family planning have been examined through attitudinal surveys in five
Aboriginal communities. Aboriginal people may sometimes talk casually
about the need to ’keep blacking on’, but Aboriginal women generally
approve the use of contraception, particularly for spacing births.
However, extreme reticence on the part of Aboriginal people about the
reproductive aspects of women’s lives poses serious problems for the
delivery of health services. There is disparity between what Aboriginal
women want, what health services would like to achieve, and what is
actually achieved. The reasons that Aboriginal women give for wanting more
children, or not, reveal the importance of economic considerations at the
household level in fertility motivations. These microeconomic motivations
are linked with changes brought on by the improvement of educational
opportunites for Aboriginal children. The effects of change in educational
opportunities, however, are most apparent in the parental generation rather
than among the recipients of longer education, for whom Aboriginal methods
of family formation provide a strong prop for continuing high fertility in
early adulthood.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Page
Acknowledgments iv
Abstract vi
Chapter One. Introduction. 1
Purpose of the Study. 1
Some Perspectives. 5
Matters of Definition. 13
Method of Analysis. 20
Chapter Two. A Survey of Data Sources. 24
Population Census Data. 26
A Population Record. 36
Data from Administrative Sources. 39
Situation Surveys. 44
Data Requirements, Availability and Quality. 47
Chapter Three. The Level of Aboriginal Fertility. 49
Historical Perspective. 49
The Aboriginal Family. 62
Aboriginal Fertility from Recent Census Results. 73
A Summary of Problems for Study. 92
Page ix
Chapter Four. Fertility and Population Change. 95
Recent Mortality. 95
The Effect of Fertility Decline on Infant Mortality. 129
Fertility Change since 1900. 131
Components of Growth of the Aboriginal Population. 135
Chapter Five. Some Correlates of Aboriginal Fertility. 142
Introduction. 142
Differentials in Aboriginal Fertility from 1976
Census Data. 148
Discussion. 180
Chapter Six. Situation Surveys of Five Aboriginal Communities. 183
Chapter Seven. Health Services and Fertility. 217
Aboriginal Attitudes to Family Planning. 217
Issues in the Delivery of Health Services. 240
Health Services, Infant Mortality and Fertility
Decline. 252
Chapter Eight. Fertility and Community. 254
Fertility in the Study Communities. 254
Attitudes to Family Size. 275
The Value of Children to Aboriginal Parents. 284
Fertility and Society. 308
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Chapter Nine. Conclusions. 312
Assessment. 312
Problems for Further Study. 316
Implications. 318
Appendix 1. Adjustment of Census Data on Issue. 323
Theory. 323
Application: Parity of Aboriginal Women, Australian
Censuses 1966 to 1981. 328
Discussion. 335
Appendix 2. Correction of Underenumeration of Deaths. 338
Introduction. 338
Sectional Growth Balance in a Population Closed to
Migration. 341
An Experimental Evaluation. 345
Application: Mortality of Aboriginal Australians. 351
Conclusion. 357
Appendix 3. Model Life Tables, Aboriginal Pattern. 358
Appendix 4. Interview Schedules Used for Situation Surveys. 375
Personal Interview, Married Women. 377
Household Schedule. 391
Appendix 5. 1981 Census Age and Sex Distributions of the
Aboriginal Population of Each Study Community. 395
Bibliography. 397