This chapter provides an overview of the demographic situation in Ukraine, including explanations for the decline to very low fertility and changes in family policy. Drawing on official statistics, survey data, and focus group interviews, the analysis shows that the country’s decline to...

This document describes the standardization process of the Harmonized Histories. The Harmonized Histories is a comparative database of rich reproductive and union histories from surveys conducted in a number of countries in Europe. Given that birth and union data has been collected in a number...

Using retrospective union, birth, and education histories that span 1980-2003, this study investigates nonmarital childbearing in post-Soviet Russia. We employ a combination of methods to decompose fertility rates by union status and analyze the processes that lead to a nonmarital birth. We find...

This paper investigates the role of states and regions in shaping spatial patterns of non-marital fertility in Europe since 1960 using a dataset of 497 European subnational regions and smaller countries. Almost all regions registered substantial nonmarital fertility increases over the last 50...

Nearly every European country has experienced some increase in nonmarital childbearing, largely due to increasing births within cohabitation. Relatively few studies in Europe, however, investigate the educational gradient of childbearing within cohabitation or how it changed over time. Using...

Maternity leave policies are designed to ease the tension between women’s employment and fertility, but whether they actually play such a role remains unclear. We analyze the individual-level effects of maternity leave on employment outcomes and on second conception rates among Russian...