European countries with delayed childbearing are not those with lower fertility

Éva Beaujouan,Laurent Toulemon

doi:10.1186/s41118-020-00108-0

Abstract

At the individual level, a very strong negative relationship is observed between age at first birth and total number of children. However, at the country level, it is possible that no relationship exists between factors that reduce fertility at younger ages and stimulate it at older ages. Hence, across countries, the size of the decline in youth fertility is potentially unrelated to the size of the increase in fertility at older ages or the decline in total fertility. We study the fertility of women and their age at childbirth, with particular attention to their evolution over the last 40 years in countries across Europe. Comparing these countries, the increase in births after age 30 has occurred relatively independently of the decline at younger ages according to both period and cohort, and we find no positive relationship between the delay of first birth and decline in total fertility. On the contrary, an inverse relationship evidently exists at the country level, as longer delays generally correspond to smaller declines in total fertility. Context effects largely dominate individual constraints and play an important role in the occurrence of later births.

Highlights

Since the mid-1970s, the average maternal age at birth has been rising in most European countries (Frejka & Sobotka, 2008; Mills, Rindfuss, Mcdonald, Velde, & Force, 2011)
The increase in maternal age at childbirth overall has been interpreted as resulting from first birth “postponement”. This postponement dynamic, followed by a full or partial catch-up of births within cohorts, implies that people postpone having children for a given reason while continuing to anticipate becoming parents (Neels & De Watcher, 2010; Sobotka, Zeman, Lesthaeghe, Frejka, & Neels, 2011). Another possible interpretation at the population level is that two distinct phenomena are occurring without necessarily any empirical or causal relationship between them (Ní Bhrolcháin & Toulemon, 2005), namely that fertility is decreasing at young ages while independently
We argue that—for social, normative, economic, and policy reasons—no relationship exists between the increase at old ages and the decline at young ages when comparing countries

Summary

Introduction

Since the mid-1970s, the average maternal age at birth has been rising in most European countries (Frejka & Sobotka, 2008; Mills, Rindfuss, Mcdonald, Velde, & Force, 2011). Greater flexibility in childbearing schedules may correspond to having more children at older ages, irrespective of the fertility decline at young ages, thereby resulting in a positive relationship between the increases in mean age and fertility rates when comparing countries.

Results

Conclusion