Childbearing Trends And Prospects In Low Fertility Countries

"This is a tour de force in cohort fertility analysis, a deep and powerful piece of work. It is a striking demonstration of the force of really detailed empirical analysis of excellent and comprehensive data, with the data looked at from every angle and judiciously extrapolated into the future. It represents a major contribution to our understanding of contemporary low fertility in Europe and other developed nations..." Thomas K. Burch, University of Victoria, BC, Canada

This volume examines ten economically advanced countries in Europe and Asia that have experienced different levels of fertility decline. It offers readers a cross-country perspective on the causes and consequences of low birth rates and the different policy responses to this worrying trend. The countries examined are not only diverse geographically, historically, and culturally, but also have different policies and institutions in place. They include six very-low-fertility countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and Taiwan) and four that have close to replacement-level fertility (United Kingdom, Norway, Canada, and France). Although fertility has gone down in all these countries over the past 50 years, the chapters examine the institutional, policy, and cultural factors that have led some countries to have much lower fertility rates than others. In addition, the final chapter provides a cross-country comparison of individual perceptions about obs tacles to fertility, based on survey data, and government support for families. This broad overview, along with a general introduction, helps put the specific country papers in context. As birth rates continue to decline, there is increasing concern about the fate of social welfare systems, including healthcare and programs for the elderly. This book will help readers to better understand the root causes of such problems with its insightful discussion on how a country’s institutions, policies, and culture shape fertility trends and levels.

This book brings together work on the low fertility countries of East Asia with an analysis of trends in fertility, what we know about their determinants and consequences, the policy issues and how these are being addressed in the various countries.

This data booklet summarises and presents key fertility indicators on world fertility patterns from the latest population estimates and projections, World Population Prospects 2015. The relevant data and evidence are made available in an easily accessible manner.

New perspectives in interpreting contemporary family and reproductive - haviour of Mediterranean Europe 1. THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF FERTILITY AND THE FAMILY IN EUROPE The countries of southern Europe have begun to reduce conjugal fertility at a later date compared to most other nations in the west. This has been - plained by means of the category of delay: the backwardness of the pr- esses of accumulation and economic development being seen as the cause of the maintaining of the reproductive models of the past. Moreover, the inf- ence of the Catholic Church in Italy, Spain and Portugal is supposed to have delayed the processes of secularisation, rendering difficult the changes in mentality necessary for assuming modern patterns of reproductive behaviour not only for fertility, but also for the variables which are strictly linked to it, such as sexuality, contraception and abortion (Livi Bacci, 1977; Lesthaeghe and Wilson, 1986). 1. 1. The trends of very low fertility Now the panorama is very different. Since the mid-seventies, southern Europe has been washed by the tide of a lowest-low fertility (i. e. , TFR under 1. 5 for several a prolonged period, Billari et al. , 2003), which in some areas 1 has reached and maintained scarcely imaginable levels for years on end. Conversely, other areas of Europe, where fertility started to fall many d- ades earlier than in the regions of the sourth, have recovered or maintained considerably higher levels of fertility, often close to replacement level.

This book provides a unique blend of social and biomedical sciences in the field of low fertility and reproductive health. It offers a significant contribution to understanding the determinants of low fertility mostly in East Asia, including an assessment of the effectiveness of policies that aim to raise fertility. It introduces new analytical tools and methods and shares application of innovative approaches to analyzing cross-sectional and longitudinal survey data and macro socioeconomic data to shed light on changing mechanisms of low fertility in the context of reproductive health. The volume introduces the demographic dividend into the study of fertility, analyzes possible impact of population ageing on the amount of resources allocated to child rearing, i.e. the so called "crowding effect" in social care and public spending between the elderly and children. The book also tests the Low Fertility Trap (LFT) hypothesis, a new important theory regarding fertility trends. The book focuses on East Asia which is numerically large but relatively under-researched with regard to issues covered in various chapters. The relevance of the volume, however, goes beyond countries in East Asia. The book breaks new grounds and reveals little known facts regarding the influence of endocrine disruptors on male fertility through falling sperm counts, the phenomenon of marital sexlessness and about the sexual behavior of adolescents in East Asia.