Fertility rates in the white areas and homelands diverged in the early 1970s. Through the
1960s, the annual share of African woman born in white areas that gave birth was the same as
the share of African women born in homelands gave birth (Figure 6). As the government first
provided family planning services in white areas, African fertility in white areas fell relative to
the homelands. For example, in 1960 about 3 percent of women born in white areas and
homelands gave birth; in 1980, 11 percent of women born in white areas gave birth while nearly
14 percent of women born in homelands gave birth. (Again, the share of women giving birth
appears to rise in the 1950s and 1960s in both white areas and homelands because of sample
censoring: the OHS records only women who were teenagers in the 1950s, but by the 1970s a
wide age range of mothers are recorded.)
The decline in fertility in white areas was substantial. The following event study
difference-in-differences, or interrupted time series, calculates the difference in fertility among
African women born in white areas and homelands in each year minus the difference in 1969, the
year before the government first directly provided family planning services: