SEU-FER · Southern Europe and low fertility: micro and macro determinants of a crucial demographic and cultural revolution

Southern Europe and low fertility: micro and macro determinants of a crucial demographic and cultural revolution

"Fertility decline in Europe has been underway for several decades and is known as fertility transition. This process has taken place over the last two centuries with different patterns and paces with the result that by the 1980s a large proportion of European countries were experiencing fertility levels at or below 2.1 children per woman, the threshold that is conventionally considered to ensure the renewal of generations. Only ten years later, in the 1990s, Spain (together with Italy) experienced significantly lower values (1.5 children per woman), qualifying it for inclusion in a group of European countries with low and ""lowest low fertility"". During this period, many provinces of Spain and Italy even recorded a TFR (Total fertility rate) falling below 1. Although in recent years there have been signs of recovery, the current economic recession is an obstacle to an effective improvement. Below replacement fertility is a condition that affects much of Southern Europe, a considerable number of other European areas, and also more recently industrialised countries. The forces that have driven this epochal change have been broadly identified, with an established correlation between fertility decline and modernization as characterised by industrialization, urbanization, increasing education and decreasing mortality. However at the individual level, the mechanisms that have been driving this general process of change are still blurred. In particular, the specific factors that induced women, within few generations, to give birth to fewer children at later ages are insufficiently explored. Discovering and detecting the mechanisms of fertility decline would clarify not only a fundamental piece of Southern Europe recent history, but will also facilitate a deeper knowledge of culture and society. SEU-FER will provide an explanatory framework for two countries (Spain and Italy) that are not only demographically important in southern Europe, but also have a strong economic, social and cultural relevance for the whole European Continent. Different factors will be considered: the socio-economic, political, environmental and territorial contexts, the role of institutions, but also community access to services, modernisation and information; individual and household variables like education, SES (Socio Economic Status), family composition and fertility behaviours of parents (and relatives). The analysis explore both overall fertility levels and temporal components of fertility using Event History technique and proportional hazards models. Models provide the individual risk of having a child or, on the contrary, the risk of remaining childless in a specific time span. Results are provided not only for women, but also for men, a crucial aspect because in the process of fertility decline men’s role have hardly been considered by most demographic literature"

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз