Fertility. Fertility is the natural capability to produce offspring.
As a measure, fertility rate is the number of offspring born per mating pair, individual or population. Fertility differs from fecundity, which is defined as the potential for reproduction A lack of fertility is infertility while a lack of fecundity would be called sterility.
Human fertility depends on factors of nutrition, sexual behavior, consanguinity, culture, instinct, endocrinology, timing, economics, way of life, and emotions. In demographic contexts, fertility refers to the actual production of offspring, rather than the physical capability to produce which is termed fecundity.
While fertility can be measured, fecundity cannot be. Demographers measure the fertility rate in a variety of ways, which can be broadly broken into period measures and cohort measures. Period measures refer to a cross-section of the population in one year.
Cohort data on the other hand, follows the same people over a period of decades. Both period and cohort measures are widely used. Crude birth rate-the number of live births in a given year per 1,000 people alive at the middle of that year. One disadvantage of this indicator is that it is influenced by the age structure of the population. General fertility rate-the number of births in a year divided by the number of women aged 15-44, times 1000. It focuses on the potential mothers only,