Several countries in Northern and Western Europe report cohort fertility rates of close to two children per woman, including Belgium, France, and Denmark. By contrast, most Central and Southern European countries have cohort fertility levels of only around 1.5-1.6 children. Germany is part of...

For studying both individual-level and small-scale contextual influences on the effects of family policies on fertility, Multilevel Event History methods are the state-of-the-art. But in many countries, these methods cannot be applied because the available individual-level data are inadequate....

This paper analyzes the impact of women’s economic activity, earnings and take-up of child home care allowance on childbearing, using a ten percent sample from a longitudinal register data set that covers the entire female population of reproductive age in Finland in 1988–2000. Results show...

Following the collapse of the communist regimes in Bulgaria and Russia, the two countries have experienced dramatic fertility decline. The aim of this paper is to examine the individual contribution of various factors that have contributed to the overall drop in first and second births. By means...

In this paper, we explore the inter-individual diversity in fertility among women in Austria for the female birth cohorts 1917-1961. Comparative studies revealed that all Western countries have witnessed a decline in the concentration of reproduction during the 20th century, a trend that has...

In the present note, we display the main features of recent trends in vital family-demographic behavior in Sweden. We update previously published indexes of marriage, divorce, and childbearing risks by calendar year in order to cover the developments up trough 2002, adding another two to three...