The Czech Republic presently shows one of the lowest total fertility rates (TFR) in Europe. A decline in period fertility followed the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy that started in 1990. In this study, we investigate women’s transition to first births,...

The aim of this paper is to compare family policies and fertility patterns in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the German Federal Republic (FRG). Among other aspects, both societies particularly differed in the integration of women into the labor market. By contrasting the...

In this paper, we study the transition to motherhood in the first co-residential union in the dual-earner context of state socialism, namely in Hungary and Poland between the late 1960s and the end of the 1980s. Our analyses are based on data extracted from the Polish and the Hungarian Fertility...

In many surveys, information on respondents’ education histories is restricted to the level and sometimes the date they attained their highest degree. We compare estimates of education effects on first birth transitions using imputed histories based on this rudimentary information with...

The goal of this study is to investigate whether and how fast Swedish women returned to work after their first birth and what were the incentives and constraints for their decisions during the latest decades when Sweden was experiencing significant fluctuations both in its economy and in its...

This paper presents the status report on Bangladesh’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). Having prepared the Interim-PRSP (I-PRSP) in March 2003, the government of Bangladesh has set itself to a well-rounded process of preparing the full-blown PRSP by December 2004. That would...

This paper focuses on the National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction for Bangladesh. The paper discusses that accelerating growth and bringing a pro-poor orientation in the growth process would be achieved through emphasizing four priority areas: accelerated growth in rural areas and...

In the last decades female permanent sterilisation became the most used contraception method in Mexico. During this time the demand for pills, condoms and other short-term contraceptives fell consistently. The shift in the demand for contraceptives raises concerns among demographers that the...

Levels and trends of various facets concerning first births are continuously changing. The evidence confirms that the postponement of first births is an ongoing and persisting process which started in western countries among cohorts of the 1940s, but only in the 1960s cohorts in Central and...

Presuming that not just economic circumstances but also ideational factors influence fertility decisions, the paper examines the values of children of East and West-German childless men and women living with a partner. Based on the survey about ‘Change and Development of Family Life...