Childbearing within cohabitation has gained considerable ground in recent decades, but existing explanations for this development are not coherent. Proponents of the Second Demographic Transition framework interpret it rather as a pattern of progress driven by processes such as emancipation from...

Over the last decades numerous studies have dealt with demographic differences between the former communist eastern part of Germany and western Germany. Although the demography of these two regions has converged with respect to mortality and overall fertility levels, non-marital births are the...

Nearly every European country has experienced some increase in nonmarital childbearing, largely due to increasing births within cohabitation. Relatively few studies in Europe, however, investigate the educational gradient of childbearing within cohabitation or how it changed over time. Using...

This document describes the standardization process of the Harmonized Histories. The Harmonized Histories is a comparative database of rich reproductive and union histories from surveys conducted in a number of countries in Europe. Given that birth and union data has been collected in a number...

The paper contributes to a debate on recent fertility developments in eastern and western Germany as well as on the lacking convergence of family formation patterns between the two regions. We address the relationship between the perception of instable employment careers and economic insecurity...

Theoretical propositions on the importance of social effects arising from informal interaction on fertility change are not yet supported by systematic empirical evidence (Kohler et al. 2002). The correct identification of informal relationships sali1ent for fertility decision-making and the...

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This article investigates the role of women´s residential district in the process of family formation in western Germany during the 1980s and 1990s. Our analysis of the transition to first marriage and motherhood is based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), which we merge with a rich...

The paper provides an extensive descriptive analysis and comparison of recent trends in union formation and fertility in Bulgaria and Russia. The analysis is based on data from the Generation and Gender Surveys (GGS) carried out in 2004. We generate a large number of single- and multi-decrement...