During the apartheid era, all South Africans were formally classified as white,
African, coloured, or Asian. Starting in 1970, the government directly provided
free family planning services to residents of townships and white-owned farms.
Relative to African residents of other regions of the country, the share of African
women that gave birth in these townships and white-owned farms declined by
nearly one-third during the 1970s. Deferral of childbearing into the 1980s
partially explains this decline, but lifetime fertility fell by one child per woman.