The correct denominator is the number of live deliveries , not treatment cycles and not babies. Define and use ; this is the distinction in denominators in grouped birth-outcome models. The observed conditional multiple-delivery proportion is initially and finally.
A constant logit has residual deviance on 13 degrees of freedom. A linear-year fit gives , deviance on 12 degrees of freedom (), and annual odds ratio . A quadratic term improves the deviance by on one degree of freedom (), whereas a further cubic improvement is only (). A supported parsimonious binomial model is
Its residual deviance is on 11 degrees of freedom (), and Pearson statistic is , with no detected excess dispersion. The binomial standard errors are ; approximate 95% Wald confidence intervals are , , and . The annual odds multiplier is , describing near-flat early behaviour and a stronger later reduction, rather than a uniform annual decrease.
As a secondary check, modelling the triplet-or-higher share alone among deliveries needs curvature: its quadratic logit has residual deviance on 11 degrees of freedom, compared with for a straight line. Multiple delivery became less likely conditional on a live delivery, especially later in the series; higher-order multiples declined particularly strongly. This conditional probability is separate from the probability of any successful live delivery per cycle.
Figure 1.
Guerry reconstruction and complete IVF analyses, with clearly labelled bus and village excerpts
. Details.