Latest‐Late Fertility? Decline and Resurgence of Late Parenthood Across the Low‐Fertility Countries

Eva Beaujouan

Population and Development Review, 2020, vol. 46, issue 2, 219-247

Abstract: After decades of fertility postponement, we investigate recent changes in late parenthood across low‐fertility countries in the light of observations from the past. We use long series of age‐specific fertility rates from the Human Fertility Database (1950–2016) for women, and new data covering the period 1990–2016 for men. In 1950, the contribution of births at age 40 and over to female fertility rates ranged from 2.5 to 9 percent, but then fell sharply until the 1980s. From the 1990s, however, the prevalence of late first births increased rapidly, especially so in countries where it was initially lowest. This has produced a late fertility rebound in the last two decades, occurring much faster for women than for men. Comparisons between recent and past extremely late (age 48+) fertility levels confirm that people are now challenging the natural fertility barriers, particularly for a first child.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12334

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:popdev:v:46:y:2020:i:2:p:219-247

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0098-7921

Access Statistics for this article

Population and Development Review is currently edited by Paul Demeny and Geoffrey McNicoll

More articles in Population and Development Review from The Population Council, Inc.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().