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The Brazilian period total fertility rate (PTFR) dropped to 1.8 in 2010 (1.5 among those with high education). Due to shifts in fertility timing, the PTFR may provide a misleading picture of fertility levels. The consequences of these changes for the cohort total fertility rate (CTFR)-a measure free from tempo distortions-and for educational differences in completed fertility remain unknown. Due to data limitations, CTFR forecasts in low- and middle-income countries are rare. We use Brazilian censuses to reconstruct fertility rates indirectly and forecast the CTFR for all women and by educational level. Four forecasting methods indicate that the CTFR is unlikely to fall to the level of the PTFR. Educational differences in the CTFR are likely to be stark, at 0.7-0.9, larger than in many high-income countries with comparable CTFRs. We show how the CTFR can be forecasted in settings with limited data and call for more research on educational differences in completed fertility in low- and middle-income countries.

With historically similar patterns of high and stable cohort fertility and high levels of gender equality, the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland are seen as forerunners in demographic behavior. Furthermore, Nordic fertility trends have strongly influenced fertility theories. However, the period fertility decline that started around 2010 in many countries with relatively high fertility is particularly pronounced in the Nordic countries, raising the question of whether Nordic cohort fertility will also decline and deviate from its historically stable pattern. Using harmonized data across the Nordic countries, we comprehensively describe this period decline and analyze the extent to which it is attributable to tempo or quantum effects. Two key results stand out. First, the decline is mostly attributable to first births but can be observed across all ages from 15 to the mid-30s. This is a reversal from the previous trend in which fertility rates in the early 30s increased relatively steadily in those countries in the period 1980-2010. Second, tempo explains only part of the decline. Forecasts indicate that the average Nordic cohort fertility will decline from 2 children for the 1970 cohort to around 1.8 children for the late 1980s cohorts. Finland diverges from the other countries in terms of its lower expected cohort fertility (below 1.6), and Denmark and Sweden diverge from Finland, Iceland, and Norway in terms of their slower cohort fertility decline. These findings suggest that the conceptualization of the Nordic model of high and stable fertility may need to be revised., (Copyright © 2021 The Authors.)

Forecasts of completed fertility predict how many children will be born on average by women over their entire reproductive lifetime. These forecasts are important in informing public policy and influencing additional research in the social sciences. However, nothing is known about how to choose a forecasting method from a large basket of variants. We identified 20 major methods, with 162 variants altogether. The approaches range from naive freezing of current age-specific fertility rates to methods that use statistically sophisticated techniques or are grounded in demographic theory. We assess each method by evaluating the overall accuracy and if provided, uncertainty estimates using fertility data of all available birth cohorts and countries of the Human Fertility Database, which covers 1,096 birth cohorts from 29 countries. Across multiple measures of forecast accuracy, we find only four methods that consistently outperform the naive freeze rates method, and only two methods produce uncertainty estimates that are not severely downward biased. Among the top four, there are two simple extrapolation methods and two Bayesian methods. The latter are demanding in terms of input data, statistical techniques, and computational power but do not consistently complete cohort fertility more accurately at all truncation ages than simple extrapolation. This broad picture is unchanged if we base the validation on 201 United Nations countries and six world regions, including Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, northern America, and Oceania., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2018 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.)

As parental ages at birth continue to rise, concerns about the effects of fertility postponement on offspring are increasing. Due to reproductive ageing, advanced parental ages have been associated with negative health outcomes for offspring, including decreased longevity. The literature, however, has neglected to examine the potential benefits of being born at a later date. Secular declines in mortality mean that later birth cohorts are living longer. We analyse mortality over ages 30-74 among 1.9 million Swedish men and women born 1938-60, and use a sibling comparison design that accounts for all time-invariant factors shared by the siblings. When incorporating cohort improvements in mortality, we find that those born to older mothers do not suffer any significant mortality disadvantage, and that those born to older fathers have lower mortality. These findings are likely to be explained by secular declines in mortality counterbalancing the negative effects of reproductive ageing.

An inverse association between education and fertility in women has been found in many societies but the causes of this association remain inadequately understood. We investigated whether observed and unobserved family-background characteristics explained educational differences in lifetime fertility among 35,212 Finnish women born in 1940-50. Poisson and logistic regression models, adjusted for measured socio-demographic family-background characteristics and for unobserved family characteristics shared by siblings, were used to analyse the relationship between education and the number of children, having any children, and fertility beyond the first child. The woman's education and the socio-economic position of the family were negatively associated with fertility. Observed family characteristics moderately (3-28 per cent) explained the association between education and fertility, and results from models including unobserved characteristics supported this interpretation. The remaining association may represent a causal relationship between education and fertility or joint preferences that form independently of our measures of background.

The literature on fertility and happiness has neglected comparative analysis. We investigate the fertility/happiness association using data from the world values surveys for 86 countries. We find that, globally, happiness decreases with the number of children. This association, however, is strongly modified by individual and contextual factors. Most importantly, we find that the association between happiness and fertility evolves from negative to neutral to positive above age 40, and is strongest among those who are likely to benefit most from upward intergenerational transfers. In addition, analyses by welfare regime show that the negative fertility/ happiness association for younger adults is weakest in countries with high public support for families, and the positive association above age 40 is strongest in countries where old-age support depends mostly on the family. Overall these results suggest that children are a long-term investment in well-being, and highlight the importance of the life-cycle stage and contextual factors in explaining the happiness/fertility association.

Drawing cohort profiles and cohort forecasts from grids of age-period data is common practice in demography. In this research note, we (1) show how demographic measures artificially fluctuate when calculated from the diagonals of age-period rates because of timing and cohort-size bias, (2) estimate the magnitude of these biases, and (3) illustrate how prediction intervals for cohort indicators of mortality may become implausible when drawn from Lee-Carter methods and age-period grids. These biases are surprisingly large, even when the cohort profiles are created from single-age, single-year period data. The danger is that we overinterpret deviations from expected trends that were induced by our own data manipulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational differences in female cohort fertility vary strongly across high-income countries and over time, but knowledge about how educational fertility differentials play out at the sub-national regional level is limited. Examining these sub-national regional patterns might improve our understanding of national patterns, as regionally varying contextual conditions may affect fertility. This study provides for the first time for a large number of European countries a comprehensive account of educational differences in the cohort fertility rate (CFR) at the sub-national regional level. We harmonise data from population registers, censuses, and large-sample surveys for 15 countries to measure women's completed fertility by educational level and region of residence at the end of the reproductive lifespan. In order to explore associations between educational differences in CFRs and levels of economic development, we link our data to regional GDP per capita. Empirical Bayesian estimation is used to reduce uncertainty in the regional fertility estimates. We document an overall negative gradient between the CFR and level of education, and notable regional variation in the gradient. The steepness of the gradient is inversely related to the economic development level. It is steepest in the least developed regions and close to zero in the most developed regions. This tendency is observed within countries as well as across all regions of all countries. Our findings underline the variability of educational gradients in women's fertility, suggest that higher levels of development may be associated with less negative gradients, and call for more in-depth sub-national-level fertility analyses by education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing period fertility decline in the Nordic countries is particularly strong in Finland, where the total fertility rate (TFR) reached an all-time low of 1.41 in 2018. We analyse the decrease in Finland's TFR in 2010–17, and assess its consequences for cohort fertility using complementary approaches. Decomposition of this fertility decline shows that first births and women aged <30 are making the largest contributions. However, women aged 30–39 are also, for the first time in decades, experiencing a sustained fertility decline. Tempo adjustments to the TFR suggest that quantum change is part of the decline. Several forecasting methods indicate that cohort fertility is likely to decline from the long-lasting level of 1.85–1.95 to 1.75 or lower among women born in the mid-1980s. Without an exceptionally strong recovery in fertility, Finnish cohort fertility is likely to decline to levels currently observed among countries with very low fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time, high‐income countries tended to report a negative association between female educational attainment and childbearing. Belgium was among the first countries that seemed to witness the emergence of a positive educational gradient in female fertility. It has been argued that—alongside other contextual correlates—this trend reflects the increasing availability of work–family reconciliation policies from which especially highly educated people benefit. In contrast to the sizable body of literature assessing varying educational gradients in female fertility across countries, subnational regional variation has hitherto received little attention. As a result, we study the Belgian case using unique microdata covering all residents in 2002–2005. The main focus is on the relevance of between‐municipality variation in economic conditions and childcare services for understanding variation in second birth hazards by educational attainment. We show that a considerable part of the municipal variation in the educational gradient in second birth hazards reflects a positive link between fertility and childcare provisions as well as wealth for highly educated women, contrasting with lower educated groups. Our findings suggest that institutional support for families is relevant but also incurs the risk of increased social polarisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates spatial variation in fertility in Europe. We analyse spatial variation in total fertility rates using small‐scale geographical data from 21 European countries for 2010 and investigate the role economic, sociocultural, and spatial factors play in regional fertility levels. We compare the performance of conventional ordinary least squares regression and multilevel modelling with that of different spatial regression models and show that the spatial approach is superior for modelling regional fertility variation. The analysis shows that fertility levels in a region are strongly related to gross domestic product per capita and the share of divorced individuals in the region, and fertility levels in neighbouring regions, supporting that all three realms of fertility determinants—economic, sociocultural, and spatial—are relevant for understanding modern fertility variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major component driving cross-country fertility differences in the developed world is differences in the probability of having additional children among those who have one. Why do people stop at having only one child? We hypothesize that the experience of the transition to parenthood is an important determinant of further fertility. Analyzing longitudinal data from Germany, we find that the experience during the transition to parenthood, as measured by changes in subjective well-being, predicts further parity progression. A drop in well-being surrounding first birth predicts a decreased likelihood of having another child. The association is particularly strong for older parents and those with higher education: these characteristics may be related to the ability or willingness to revise fertility plans based on prior experiences. Parents' experience with the first birth is an important and understudied factor in determining completed family size, and policy-makers concerned about low fertility should pay attention to factors that influence the well-being of new parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The association between reproductive success and income in economically developed societies remains a controversial and understudied topic. The commonly made statement that individuals with a higher income have fewer children defies evolutionary explanation. Here we present results from an analyses of the association between lifetime reproductive success (LRS) and income for modern Europeans from 13 countries. We examine the relationships among income, partner income, sex and LRS, and the role of childlessness in driving the relationships. For women, we find a negative association between LRS and income, while for men, we find a flat or slightly positive one. The sex difference in the association appears to be driven by income''s sex-specific association with childlessness; men with a low income have a relatively high risk of childlessness, while women with a low income have a low risk of childlessness. Consequently, once childless people are excluded from the analysis, LRS is negatively associated with income for both sexes. We argue that the observed LRS–income associations may be an outcome of evolved behavioural predispositions operating in modern environments and conclude that, even though humans fail to maximise LRS at all income levels in modern settings, evolutionary theory can still help to explain sex differences in LRS. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]