The transformation of traditional childbearing patterns of early family formation to later family formation characterized recent fertility trends in Russia. These were intrinsically interwoven with fundamental changes in all aspects of life of young people in the 1990s and the 2000s. The past...

Combining cohort and period perspectives a method is developed that follows the process of childbearing postponement and recuperation and its reflection in total period fertility levels and trends in low fertility populations. It is complementary to methods pioneered by Bongaarts and Feeney...

Major changes in childbearing patterns are continuously taking place in the majority of low-fertility populations with postponement being virtually universal. Almost everywhere the two-child family became dominant. Proportions of childless women and one-child families were increasing recently....

Early in the 21st century modern contraception -- primarily hormonal methods, advanced IUDs, sterilization and condoms -- has become the main instrument of birth regulation in Northern and Western Europe and gaining ground in Southern Europe and the formerly state socialist countries of Central...

Societal conditions for early and high rates of childbearing were replaced by conditions generating late and low levels of fertility common in Western countries. Central among factors shaping the latter behaviour (job insecurity, unstable partnership relationships, expensive housing, and...

Major changes in the age patterns of fertility were characteristic of fertility trends following the Second World War. The paper provides an overview and analysis of changes in age patterns of cohort childbearing in low-fertility countries during the second half of the 20 th century. In Western...

European fertility early in the 21st century was at its lowest level since the Second World War. This study explores contemporary childbearing trends and policies in Europe, and gives detailed attention to the past two or three decades. We felt motivated to undertake this project because in many...

Total fertility rates were declining from peaks experienced by early 1930s cohorts for 20 successive cohorts. The decline ceased among the 1950s and 1960s cohorts, because fertility deficits of young women were compensated with increased fertility when women reached their late twenties and...

Early in the 21st century, three-quarters of Europe’s population lived in countries with fertility considerably below replacement. This general conclusion is arrived at irrespective of whether period or cohort fertility measures are used. In Western and Northern Europe, fertility quantum...

By the end of the 20th century the two-child family became the norm throughout Europe. Between 40 and over 50 percent of women in the 1950s and 1960s cohorts had two children. There were some incipient signs that shares of two-child families were declining, especially in Central and Eastern and...