Fertility intentions and their realization in the context of reproductive senescence.

Paper addresses question whether decrease in female fecundity (reproductive senescence) during life cycle might have an influence on realization of fertility. Increasing age at first attempt to conceive might translate into lower than planned number of offspring due to divergence between lifecycle of modern females and changes in fecundity over the life course. We use waiting time to pregnancy (WtP) to account for impact of reproductive ageing on conception probability. This retrospective methodology reflects definition of sub-fertility and infecundity as number of months with regular unprotected intercourse ending (or not) in pregnancy. WtP has been implemented in Polish GGS and contains questions about infertility and number of menstrual cycles needed for conception. Analyses reveal significant increase in WtP among women aged 35+, slight increase among females aged 30-35 and no decrease for younger females. Estimates of infertility yields around 6% for females and around 3% for males (as declared by respondents). Taking into account age patterns of fertility in Poland, reproductive senescence might not have a great impact on realization of fertility intentions. However, due to increase in age at first reproduction we expect that share of couples having problems with conception (prolonged WtP) might increase in the future.