Fertility in Europe, elements for a typology

Abstract

Fertility trends in Europe during the last half-century are marked by an important decline of level. If the continuous reduction of large families is not completely extraneous to this trend, changes in cohort fertility timing highly shape variations of the Total Period Fertility Rates. Firstly, rejuvenation of fertility timing has contributed to raise its level, then the reversal of this trend with women born just after the second world war and, as consequence, the increasing distance between cohorts have contributed to depress the TPFR level. Nowadays, fertility is on the way of stabilisation in a large number of countries. Most of the European countries have follow quite the same pattern, even if there was some calendar delay, especially in southern and eastern Europe, that could be reflect a general movement of behaviour homogenisation. However, during the last twenty years, divergent trends seem to have split western countries into several groups quite well differentiated. For this differentiation, two fertility modalities seem to have a very important effect: Out of wedlock fertility, which can compensate the decline of marriage, and the proportion of women remaining childless.