Is a Positive Relationship Between Fertility and Economic Development Emerging at the Sub-National Regional Level? Theoretical Considerations and Evidence from Europe

Jonathan Fox, Sebastian Klüsener () and Mikko Myrskylä
Additional contact information
Jonathan Fox: John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin
Sebastian Klüsener: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Mikko Myrskylä: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

European Journal of Population, 2019, vol. 35, issue 3, No 3, 487-518

Abstract: Abstract Evidence for nation-states suggests that the long-standing negative relationship between fertility and economic development might turn positive at high levels of development. The robustness of the reversal continues to be debated. We add to this discussion from a novel angle by considering whether such a reversal could also occur at the sub-national level within highly developed countries. Our contributions are both theoretical and empirical. We first discuss important trends which might foster the emergence of a positive fertility–development relationship across regions of highly developed countries. These include shifts in family policies, changes in the spatial organisation of the economic sphere, and selective international and internal migration processes. In order to explore whether we observe tendencies towards a reversal, we investigate data covering 20 European countries subdivided in 256 regions between 1990 and 2012. We document a weakening of the negative relationship between fertility and economic development within many countries, and among some countries the emergence of a positive relationship. These findings do not seem to be driven by postponement effects alone. However, there is substantial variation in the fertility and the economic development levels at which such tendencies towards a reversal are observed.

Keywords: Fertility; Income; Economic development; Sub-national regions; Regional variation; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10680-018-9485-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:eurpop:v:35:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10680-018-9485-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10680

DOI: 10.1007/s10680-018-9485-1

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Population is currently edited by Helga A.G. de Valk

More articles in European Journal of Population from Springer, European Association for Population Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().