Fertility in Austria: Past, Present and the Near Future

Abstract

In the European context Austria’s population has a tradition of lowfertility. Between the world wars of the 20th century Austria had the lowestfertility in Europe. It recovered most notably during the 1950s and early 1960s,but has been declining ever since. Contemporary childbearing trends and patternsare characterised by a continuing delay in childbearing which started with womenborn in the late 1940s. Women born during the 1970s had lower fertility than anyprevious cohorts. Whether they were postponing their births and/or many of themdeciding not to have any children remains to be seen. In the cohorts of the mid- tolate 1960s only about three-quarters of all women had a first birth and aroundone-quarter of Austrian women remained childless. This is one of the highestknown proportions of childless women in Europe. At the turn of the century idealand actual expected family size were among the lowest in Europe, 1.7 and 1.5children per couple, respectively. Childbearing behaviour of its young inhabitantssuggests that Austria will reassume the tradition of having one of the lowestfertility levels in Europe during the initial years, possibly decades, of the 21stcentury. If these low fertility levels were to persist, a considerable decline inpopulation size as well as rapid population ageing are inevitable implying theneed for societal and policy adjustments.