The Netherlands has seen a considerable decline of the period total fertility rate and delayed childbearing, just like all other European countries. The drop in fertility, however, has not been as sharp as in many other regions of Europe. The period total fertility rate in the Netherlands has...

Germany is a low-fertility country with a rapidly ageing population, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. There are several reasons for this trend. Germany is among the countries with the highest rates of childlessness in the world, and childlessness has become widely accepted. This is...

The editors of the present Special Collection of the electronic journal Demographic Research take pleasure in making the Collection available to the research community and the general public. The Collection’s principal focus is the demographic analysis of European fertility trends, their...

Following the swift demise of the state-socialist regime in 1989, a profound transformation of family and fertility patterns has taken place in the Czech Republic. Family formation has been postponed and period fertility rates have fallen to very low levels, especially among young adults....

This chapter provides an overview of the demographic situation in Ukraine, including explanations for the decline to very low fertility and changes in family policy. Drawing on official statistics, survey data, and focus group interviews, the analysis shows that the country’s decline to...

In the present note, we display the main features of recent trends in 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 to 1999-2000, adding another two and three years...

The whole region of the South and East Mediterranean exhibits a profound fertility transition with marked differences in the pace of fertility declines among the countries. The authors choose three representative countries: Egypt, Morocco and Turkey. Determinants of the propensity towards...