This article addresses two questions: (i) will the mere end of further postponement of fertility in the EU-countries lead to an appreciable rise in European fertility and bring total fertility rates closer to replacement level, as witnessed in the United States? and (ii) what are the chances...

This research note is a sequel to an earlier article in this journal (Lesthaeghe and Neidert 2006) in which we documented a strong and robust spatial correlation between the 2000 and 2004 presidential election results on the one hand and the extent to which states and counties had evolved on the...

This article presents a narrative of the unfolding of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) since the theory was first formulated in 1986. The first part recapitulates the foundations of the theory, and documents the spread of the SDT to the point that it now covers most European populations....