Studies of fertility and fecundity: comparative approaches from demography and epidemiology

The approaches used by demographers and by epidemiologists for studying the fecundity of couples (i.e. their ability to conceive) have converged, whereas they were historically divergent. Demography traditionally focused on fertility - the circumstances in which livebirths occur - with the aim of predicting population changes, in particular. Demographers also rapidly became interested in fecundity, developing concepts such as fecundability and definitive sterility. The measurement of fecundability is based on determination of the time to pregnancy (TTP), the basic tool of the epidemiologist. However, while demographers were developing methods for estimating the distribution of fecundability among couples based on TTP, epidemiologists turned to methods for analysing the role of diverse factors potentially influencing fecundity at the individual level.