Statisticians like to talk of a “total maternity ratio,” which is defined as the average number of previous live births per women now age forty-five or older, regardless of whether a particular woman has children (not all women can or do have children). This ratio varies with different groups and societies. For the Ashanti of Ghana, the total maternity ratio has been estimated at approximately six; for the Sioux, eight; and for certain groups of Eskimos, less than five. Only a minority of people have ever approached a rate as high as ten. The highest rate recorded in history was 10.7 among the Hutterite in the first half of the twentieth century. The Hutterite are a communal religious group dating from the sixteenth century who settled in South Dakota between 1874 and 1877. They now live in more than a hundred different religious colonies in the Dako-tas, Montana, and Washington in the United States and in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba in Canada. It should be added that the Hut-terite total maternity rate has been declining since 1950.
Note that the total maternity ratio is based upon live births, which means that abortions are excluded, whether they are spontaneous (i.e., miscarriages) or induced, and so are still births.
