This paper examines the dispersion of fertility across age and time which has rarely been studied. Using data from the Human Fertility Database, we examine fertility age schedules by looking at standard deviations in age at first births in European countries at different stages of fertility...

Family members are uniquely situated to influence the decision-making of their kin in nearly every facet of life. We examine the importance of social interactions in fertility outcomes by assessing family members’ scope of influence on their fellow kin’s fertility behavior. With the unique...

The first Rostock Debate on Demographic Change, which took place on February 21, 2006, centered on the following question: Should governments in Europe push much more aggressively for gender equality to raise fertility? The four debaters were Laurent Toulemon from the Institut National...

Increasing proportions of couples are making childbearing decisions in stepfamilies but there has been no general comparative picture across European countries on stepfamily formation. The present paper aims to fill this gap and provides a comparison of European countries using macro-level...

This chapter provides a detailed description of the fertility changes in Bulgaria during recent decades and discusses possible reasons and consequences. It also gives an overview of the steps that the government has undertaken to offset the considerable decline in fertility. Before the fall of...