Lowest-low fertility, defined as a period total fertility rate at or below 1.3, has rapidly spread in Europe during the 1990s. This article traces the emergence of this new phenomenon to the interaction of five factors. First, tempo and compositional distortions reduce the total fertility rate...

The discussion on the causes of the most recent fertility decline in Europe, and in particular on the emergence of lowest low fertility, emphasises the relevance of cultural factors in addition to economic ones. Being part of such a cultural framework, the heterogeneity of preferences concerning...

A fundamental switch in the fertility—development relationship has occurred so that among highly developed countries, further socioeconomic development may reverse the declining fertility trend. Here we shed light on the mechanisms underlying this reversal by analyzing the links between...

A fundamental reversal of the traditional fertility-development relationship has occurred in highly developed countries so that further socioeconomic development is no longer associated with decreasing fertility, but with increasing fertility. In this paper, we seek to shed light on the...

We develop a method for the derivation of expert-based stochastic population forecasts. The full probability distribution of forecasts is specified by expert opinions on future developments, elicited conditional on the realization of high, central, low scenarios. The procedure is applied to...