History, Population Policies, and Fertility Decline in Eastern Europe

Abstract

Why does Eastern Europe have the lowest fertility in the world? Most explanations focus on the consequences of upheaval in that region during the 1990s. These socalled "transition" explanations miss a major part of the story. For the Romanian case, we show that the decline in fertility over the 1990s represents the continuation of a longstanding trend that was only interrupted by the extremely efficient pro-natalist policies inaugurated in the 1960s. We conclude that the conventional transition explanations of the 1990s fertility decline in Eastern Europe are incomplete because they fail to give due weight to the effect of population policies.Fertility decline in Europe is not new-it began back in the nineteenth century in several European countries. Scholars still debate the relative importance of economic development, cultural change, and increasing social interaction in motivating European couples to reduce their number of offspring. What we know for certain is that fertility decreased substantially and, during the twentieth century, fell well below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, long considered by demographers as a kind of watershed event.The problem of falling fertility has been taken seriously by various governments, who have allocated important resources in an attempt to stop this trend. Notable among the successful countries were a few East European countries 1 where fertility Cristina Bradatan is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Central Florida. Her work examines the relationship between family relations in various social contexts (migration, poverty, political and economic transition). Current projects include a forthcoming article examining some nineteenthcentury theories of suicide and involvement into a large, collaborative project on Demographic and Social Change in Eastern Europe

Large, But Adaptable? A Successful Population Policy and Its Long Term Effects

“…In the 1960s, fearing a population decline due to low fertility, several Eastern European countries used coercive measures to raise the number of children born (Bradatan and Firebaugh 2007). Hungary, in 1953, restricted the access to abortion and contraceptives; in Bulgaria, by the end of 1960s, abortion restrictions were introduced for married women who were childless or had only one child.…”

Yearning, Learning, and Conceding: Reasons Men and Women Change Their Childbearing Intentions

“…the gap between average intended and average achieved fertility has increased over recent decades as the fall of fertility to below-replacement levels in many developed countries has not been accompanied by a corresponding fall in fertility intentions (Bongaarts 2001). this increasing gap has often been conceptualized as reflecting an "unmet need for children" arising from constraints-biological, economic, and social-to childbearing (Coleman 2004;Bradatan and Firebaugh 2007;liefbroer 2009;Philipov et al 2009). it is debatable, however, whether these differences at the aggregate level indicate a generalized unmet need at the individual level (Smallwood and Jefferies 2003). in fact, as far back as the mid-1960s the justification for using fertility intentions to predict subsequent fertility at the aggregate level was that the substantial inconsistency between the two measures at the individual level would average out (morgan 1981).…”

Medicines For Women

“…The fact that contraception in Eastern Europe is mostly available only with prescription, and is not usually reimbursed, has little effect on overall demographic development which itself ranks as the lowest in the world (Bradatan and Firebaugh 2007). After the end of the Cold War, as a consequence of political, cultural, and economic changes in the region, as well as internal inter-generational tensions, the demographic development in the region took a marked turn downwards.…”