Resolving a Confusion in the Bongaarts and Feeney's Tempo-Adjusted Total Fertility Rate

抄録

In an article, Bongaarts and Feeney proposed a new method for adjusting the period total fertility rate to eliminate the effects of the timing of fertility behavior. Though their method have raised some criticism among demographers, related controversies throw some lights to understand effects of age-shift in demographic variables. In this short note, we do not concern the empirical problem raised by the Bongaarts and Feeney method, but mainly study the logical structure of that method to reveal its hidden hypothesis. As a result, we show that its hidden hypothesis is too difficult to hold in the real world.