Sub-Replacement Fertility Intentions in Austria

Abstract

Combining the data of the 1986-2001 Microcensus surveys, I reconstruct trends in fertility intentions across time and over the life course of Austrian women born since the 1950s. Young adults in Austria expressed fertility intentions that were below the replacement-level threshold as early as in 1986 and women born since the mid-1950s consistently desired fewer than two children on average throughout their reproductive lives. A two-child family norm, however, still clearly dominates the fertility intentions of different age, cohort and education groups. Uncertainty about childbearing intentions is rather common, especially among younger and childless respondents. Different assumptions about reproductive preferences of undecided respondents affect estimates of the mean intended family size. Although Austrians were among the first in Europe to express low fertility intentions, their position is no longer unique. By the early 2000s, young women in a number of other European countries also expressed sub-replacement fertility intentions.

Drop-out mayors and graduate farmers: Educational fertility differentials by occupational status and industry in six European countries

“…Her analysis concludes that countries with favourable policies and labour market characteristics, along with egalitarian attitudes towards women's roles, on average had higher TFRs. Support for similar conclusions has been offered by a number of other researchers examining individual country contexts (e.g., for Austria see Sobotka (2009); for Romania see Muresan et al (2008); for Hungary see Kocourkova (2002); for Greece see Rendall et al (2010)). …”

Stability and change in fertility intentions in Britain, 1991–2007

“…The difference between the current TFR and desired family size is seen by some as signalling a likely future upturn of period fertility levels to reach expressed preferences, by others as reflecting the opposite-that declared intentions will ultimately decline to reflect current actual fertility levels-and alternatively as reflecting a disjunction that could continue indefinitely in low fertility societies 9 . The apparent shortfall of actual compared with desired fertility has also been viewed as resulting from barriers to the achievement of desired family size, and thus as the rationale for family-friendly policy intervention 10 . This latter perspective has prompted several cross-national investigations of fertility intentions in a European context 11 .…”

Childlessness intentions of young female researchers in Austria

“…Childlessness ideals (as the more abstract measure, where constraints are not figured in) remained consistently below intentions and the gap between both measures increased as childlessness intentions started to go up in the oldest age group. This rise is steeper among researchers than among other highly educated women and could reflect several factors: the process of developing different preferences over time; revising intentions downward when the women realize they cannot fulfil their desires (Quesnel-Vallée/Morgan 2003;Liefbroer 2009;Sobotka 2009); or that young researchers with a strong family orientation opt out of science, while those with higher childlessness intentions remain. Most obvious is, however, the growing gap in actual childlessness between female researchers and their counterparts.…”

“…This gradient is, however, not apparent in fertil-ity intentions. Sobotka (2009) demonstrates that the percentage of Austrian women between the ages of 26-30 planning not to have children varies little between educational groups (6.7-8.6%) (data obtained upon request). However, highly educated women are more likely than their lower educated peers to revise their childbearing intentions downwards (Heiland et al 2005) or to fall short of them.…”