Search

Early evidence demonstrates that the fertility response to the COVID-19 pandemic has varied across European countries. Yet, prior research indicates that fertility responses to disasters are often localized sub-nationally. Moreover, SARS-CoV-2 incidence, economic pandemic impacts, and the affectedness by virus containment measures varied subnationally across Europe during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sub-national variation in the fertility response seems therefore possible. We conducted a rigorous data collection effort in 28 European countries (equaling 241 European sub-national regions) and used cutting-edge forecasting methods to assess sub-national variation in the fertility response to the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. While we find sub-national variation, our results reveal that the fertility response to the pandemic was dominated by the country level, with Southern European countries witnessing more negative fertility response to the early pandemic than Northern Europe. Variance decomposition even indicates a ‘nationalization’ of birth rates during the winter months of 2020, as the within- country variance in fertility declined and between-country variance increased. Nonetheless, highly urbanized areas in Europe experienced significantly steeper fertility declines as a response to the beginning of the pandemic, which is partly explained by their higher SARSCoV-2 incidence rates. SARS-CoV-2 incidence rates emerged as another important predictor of the fertility response more broadly. Higher incidences were associated with steeper fertility declines across the regions. Overall, country-level estimates represent fertility responses to the COVID-19 pandemic generally well, but the regional dimension provides additional important insight into how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted fertility.

This paper reviews cohort fertility trends and patterns in seven successor countries of former Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia’s socialist self-management in many ways differed from other state socialist regimes in Europe. Yugoslavia itself was very rich in diversity ; it comprised countries with strikingly different customs, traditions, and family practices. However, Yugo-specific cohort fertility dynamics has not yet been fully explored in the literature. Our study aims to fill this gap. More specifically, we address the following research questions: What are the trends and patterns of cohort fertility in ex-Yugoslav countries? Are some countries more similar to one another than to other countries? Can country clusters be identified? And, if so, what might account for this homogeneity within (ex-)Yugoslavia’s heterogeneity? Do ex-Yugoslav countries exhibit persistent (between-cluster) diversity, or is there (at least some) convergence in terms of cohort fertility behaviour? We use census data from the last three census rounds (1990, 2000, 2010) to develop a wide array of cohort fertility indicators, including cohort fertility rates (CFRs), CFRs by birth order, parity progression ratios (PPRs), and parity distributions. We focus on women born between 1930 and 1970. Their reproductive careers range from the 1950s baby boom up to the post-socialist transition era. The analyses we present are primarily descriptive, and we rely on various data visualisation tools to better discern between-country (dis)similarities. Our preliminary findings reveal that the ex-Yugoslav countries can be clustered into three clusters: Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia had relatively low level of cohort fertility (around 2) already by cohort 1930 and pertained this levels through the analysed cohort span. This cluster is very homogeneous also in terms of parity progression ratios and the parity composition, with strong focus on two-child family. Second cluster consists of Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Here the fertility level steadily declined from around 4–5 among cohorts born in 1910s towards two children per woman by cohorts born in 1970. Third cluster is constituted of the sole country of Kosovo, with comparatively still very high levels of cohort fertility in European context. The paper further analyses the mechanism of changes in cohort fertility in terms of in parity progression ratios and the consequences on the parity composition of families.

The thesis deals with so called "The Bory Rebellion" case, the trial fabricated by the communist regime, which took place in April and May 1950. The thesis captures the whole course of the trial, the issue by whom it was iniciated , how the investigation and hearing passed. Further it describes preparation and subsequent realization of the political campaign aimed to multiply the effects of the trial towards the Prison Guard Corps. It also seeks to find out whether the primary objective of the trial actually was to strengthen discipline within the Corps, or there was also another aim pursued by the ruling dictatorship, and how , and if at all, there was any coverage of the case towards the general public. Some attention is also paid to the victims of the trial and their further fates. The thesis primarily exploits original files of the National Archive and the Archive of the Security Bodies. Key words Prison Guard Corps, prison, rebellion, prison guard, political prisoner

During the last four decades, the two-child family ideal has become nearly universal across the low-fertility countries. The proportion of families with two children, which was growing during the baby boom, stopped increasing in the late 1940s and early 1950s birth cohorts, remaining far below the number of people reporting two as their ideal family size. This paper examines how changes in the share of two-child families were linked to trends in the transitions to first, second and third birth. We analyse how the relationship varied over time across countries and education levels using census and large-scale survey data for women born between 1936 and 1970 in 12 European countries, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. The results suggest that in most countries the changes in the share of two-child families were closely linked to the progression to third birth. Increasing childlessness also suppressed the number of two-child families in Western Germany and English-speaking countries. Changes in the transition to second birth played a nonnegligible role in Southern Europe, English-speaking countries and, except among the loweducated, in Central-Eastern Europe.

This study provides a systematic analysis of parity components of the cohort fertility decline in 32 low-fertility countries in Europe, North America, Australia and East Asia. We decompose the change in cohort fertility in each country among women born between 1940 and 1970 using parity progression ratios (PPR) derived mostly from census, register data, and large-scale surveys. We are also interested in how the effect of the changing parity progression ratios varied across broader regions and whether it was different in countries reaching very low completed fertility. The fall in fertility was mostly driven by reductions in the progression ratios to third and higher-order births in the first stage of 1940 to 1955 cohorts. Among women born between 1955 and 1970 fertility decline slowed down in most regions. This second stage of the cohort fertility decline analysed here is also distinguished by its regional diversity. The main distinction can be drawn between Central and Eastern Europe, where fertility decline was driven primarily by falling second birth rates and the German-speaking countries, Southern Europe, and East Asia, where the fall in first birth rates (and the corresponding rise in childlessness) had a stronger influence.