Europe

<p>This paper, written in 2006 was presented at the Conference "Causal Analysis in Population Studies", Vienna, 30 Nov. - 1 Dec. 2006. It is posted here unaltered, and proposes that the demographic transition is a direct consequence of natural selection rather than a sociological regularity in search of a cause. It argues that selection optimises not the number of births but the number of offspring whose arrival at reproductive maturity the progenitor survives to witness — a quantity the paper terms <i>verifiable fitness</i>.</p> <p>Three consequences follow. Falling child mortality raises rather than lowers the effective price of a birth, because a larger fraction of births now require full investment. Old-age provision and healthcare are purchased from the same budget as children and are deducted first, so societies that succeed at self-survival buy that success partly with gene survival. And the interval between mortality decline and fertility decline is an information-diffusion lag, proportional to linguistic fragmentation and inversely proportional to urbanisation, which predicts that transitions occur in cultural rather than economic units — the central and otherwise awkward finding of the Princeton European Fertility Project.</p> <p>The paper derives a fertility function, calibrates it across three development levels, and states six testable hypotheses. It predicts convergence toward approximately one child per progenitor dyad rather than toward replacement, on the ground that individually optimal fitness strategies need not preserve the group.</p> <p></p> <p>The paper is posted for priority. A companion monograph, <i>The Price of Verification</i> (2026), scores its predictions against the 2006–2026 record, documents where it was wrong, and extends it.</p>

Abstract The COVID‐19 pandemic opened a polycrisis of interrelated disruptions and compounding economic and subjective uncertainty that likely shaped fertility in high‐income countries, especially in its second phase, in which the Ukraine war was a major source and amplifier of uncertainty. Yet fertility evidence remains largely limited to the pandemic. We estimate monthly “excess” total fertility rates (TFRs) and find that declines compared to projected pre‐polycrisis trends were short‐lived during the first phase and excess TFRs overall positive in all 26 sample countries except Eastern Europe and Portugal. Instead, during the second phase, excess TFRs are strongly and increasingly negative in Eastern and Central Europe, Greece, Portugal, France, Denmark, and Sweden. Investigating potential explanatory variables, we find that the total, energy, and housing consumer price indices and reversed consumer confidence are negatively associated with excess TFRs, especially in Eastern and Central Europe, Greece, France, Denmark, and Sweden. Refugee inflows, the economic policy uncertainty index, and the geopolitical risk index show weaker negative associations. But country heterogeneity is large. Our analysis suggests that fertility dynamics are closely linked to the polycrisis, citizens’ economic conditions and confidence are the strongest correlates, and extensive welfare regimes alone may not consistently sustain fertility under accumulating uncertainty.

FindingThe role of childlessness in changes in cohort fertility: Cross-national comparisons of countries in Europe, East Asia, and North America

Abstract This study presents the first global dataset of fertility estimates and projections for cohorts of women born between 1935 and 2055. Leveraging the World Population Prospects 2024 revision, which provides single‐year single‐age fertility indicators for 1950–2100, we reconstructed cohort fertility profiles for all countries. These data offer a unique opportunity to analyze cohorts that have completed childbearing and those entering reproductive ages, extending analyses beyond countries traditionally covered by the Human Fertility Database (HFD). Cohort measures were derived by transforming period age‐specific fertility rates into Lexis triangles and aggregating them into cohort parallelograms, following HFD methodology. Validation against observed cohort data confirmed high accuracy of our estimates. Results revealed that cohort fertility declines have been more gradual than period declines, with substantial regional heterogeneity. Europe and Northern America reached replacement‐level cohort fertility with the 1946 cohort, while sub‐Saharan Africa is projected to remain above 2.3 births per woman for the 2055 cohort. In low‐fertility countries, completed cohort fertility is projected to fall below 1.5 births for the 1983 cohort in many cases. These findings underscore the stability of cohort measures compared to period indicators and highlight their value for understanding long‐term fertility dynamics and informing demographic research and policy.

Abstract Since 2010, Western Europe has experienced a renewed wave of fertility postponement, contributing to declining fertility rates and rising childlessness. Although multiple explanations have been proposed, the role of ideational factors remains underexplored. This study examines whether broad changes in values help explain contemporary fertility postponement, drawing on the framework of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT). We apply Schwartz's theory of basic human values to investigate trends in openness‐to‐change and conservation among women of childbearing age, assessing both aggregate changes over time and individual‐level associations with having entered parenthood. Results show that these values are strongly associated with differences in entry into motherhood. However, the stability in value orientations over time suggests that values are unlikely to be a primary driver of the recent fertility postponement trend. Moreover, the relationship between values and entry into motherhood has remained unchanged, indicating that contemporary postponement extends across value orientations. Some regional heterogeneity emerges, with Southern Europe showing value shifts that may contribute to fertility postponement, though their overall influence appears limited. We conclude that broad shifts in SDT‐related values are unlikely to explain the widespread fertility decline observed in Western Europe.