Total fertility rates fell to previously unseen levels in a large number of countries beginning in the early 1990s. The persistence of TFRs below 1.3 raised the possibility of rapid population aging and decline. We discuss the recent widespread turnaround in so‐called lowest‐low‐fertility countries in Europe and East Asia. The number of countries with TFRs below 1.3 fell from 21 in 2003 to five in 2008. Moreover, the upturn in the TFR was not confined to lowest‐fertility countries, but affected the whole developed world. We explore the demographic explanations for the recent rise in TFRs stemming from fertility timing effects as well as economic, policy, and social factors. Although the current economic downturn may suppress TFRs in the short run, we conclude that formerly lowest‐low‐fertility countries will continue to see increases in fertility as the transitory effects of shifts to later childbearing become less important.
Couples who have children are increasingly likely to have lived together without being married at some point in their relationship. Some couples begin their unions with cohabitation and marry before first conception, some marry during pregnancy or directly after the first birth, while others remain unmarried 3 years after the first birth. Using union and fertility histories since the 1970s for eleven countries, we examine whether women who have children in unions marry, and if so, at what stage in family formation. We also examine whether women who conceive when cohabiting are more likely to marry or separate. We find that patterns of union formation and childbearing develop along different trajectories across countries. In all countries, however, less than 40 per cent of women remained in cohabitation up to 3 years after the first birth, suggesting that marriage remains the predominant institution for raising children.
Using data from the first round of the national Gender and Generations Surveys of Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria, and from a similar survey of Hungary, which were all collected in recent years, we study rates of entry into marital and non-marital unions. We have used elements from the narrative of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) as a vehicle to give our analysis of the data from the four countries some coherence, and find what can be traces of the SDT in these countries. The details vary by country; in particular, latter-day developments in union formation patterns did not start at the same time in all the countries, but in our assessment it began everywhere before communism fell, that is, before the societal transition to a market economy got underway in 1990.Keywords Marriage Á Cohabitation Á First union Á Joint analysis of competing risks Á Second Demographic Transition Á Central and Eastern Europe Á Russia Á Romania Á Hungary Á Bulgaria Résumé A partir des données de la première vague d'enquêtes du projet Géné-rations et Genre en Russie, en Roumanie et en Bulgarie, et à partir d'une enquête comparable en Hongrie, toutes conduites récemment, cette étude s'intéresse aux taux d'entrée en union conjugale et non-conjugale. Nous avons utilisé des éléments du cadre descriptif de la seconde transition démographique comme grille d'analyse pour donner une cohérence aux données des quatre pays, et pour y explorer les traces de ce modèle de transition. Chaque pays a un contexte à part; en particulier, les évolutions récentes dans les modalités de formation des unions ont des
Past evidence on fertility responses to external shocks, including economic recessions and the outbreaks of infectious diseases, show that people often put their childbearing plans on hold in uncertain times. We study the most recent data on monthly birth trends to analyse the initial fertility responses to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research, based on new Short-Term Fertility Fluctuations (STFF) data series (https://www.humanfertility.org/cgi-bin/stff.php), embedded in the Human Fertility Database (HFD), shows the initial signs of the expected “birth recession”. Monthly number of births in many countries fell sharply between October 2020 and the most recent month observed, often bringing about a clear reversal of the previous trend. Across 17 countries with lower fluctuations in births, the number of births fell on average by 5.1% in November 2020, 6.5% in December 2020 and 8.9% in January 2021 when compared with the same month of the previous year. Spain sustained the sharpest drop in the number of births among the analysed countries, with the number of births plummeting by 20% in December 2020 and January 2021. The combined effect of rising mortality and falling birth rates is disrupting the balance of births and deaths in many countries, pushing natural population increase to record low levels in 2020 and 2021.
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