Urodzenia i płodność kobiet w wybranych krajach Unii Europejskiej

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to make a comparative analysis of changes, intensity and structure of births and the structure of reproductive age of women in selected countries of the European Union. The study included four countries of the so-called ”old Union”, i.e. Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden and also Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, the countries that joined the Community in 2004. The attention was drawn to the change in fertility model, increase in the average maternity age and the structure of births by sequence. Constant growth in the extramarital birth rate in total number of births is a characteristic feature of contemporary demographic behaviours. In Scandinavian countries extramarital children are, somehow, a standard. The research was made on the grounds of data from the years 1996–2008.