Review lecture: Recent and prospective trends in fertility in developed countries

Abstract

For many European nations, as also for North America, Australia and New Zealand, the period around World War II saw a discontinuity with what had appeared to be a firmly established demographic situation. What Hajnal has called the European marriage pattern had been characteristic of West and Central Europe, with a high age at first marriage and substantial proportions of men and women - especially women - remaining unmarried. The emergence of that pattern dates back at least to the seventeenth century and possibly earlier.And all industrialized countries were characterized by a history of declining marital fertility - a decline which in most cases dated from the 1870s or 80s, but in the United States and France went back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. A fall of 50% or more in marital fertility since the 1870s was a common feature. But during the past thirty years marriage patterns have changed in many countries and so has the trend of marital fertility. There are interconnections between these changes, but one type of change is not an adequate explanation of the other.