Abstract

PIP: It is important to analyze in which measure the reduction of fertility rate is due to changes in the age at marriage for women, and to variations in the proportion of women who never got married. This article presents a bilogistic model used to summarize the history of groups of women, or cohorts, of the same age, who have complete or incomplete nuptiality experience. The model was applied to nuptiality data gathered by the 1975 National Fertility Survey conducted in the Dominican Republic. The results show that: 1) the bilogistic model describes effectively the variation according to age of the percentage of women who get married for the first time; 2) the model can be applied to not only cohorts with complete nuptiality experience, but to cohorts with experience still in progress; and 3) it is possible to detect changes in time of the value of the 2 main parameters of the model, the one related to age at beginning of nuptiality, and the one related to age at the end of the same process.