Volume 38 - Article 56 | Pages 1699–1732  

Cohort fertility and educational expansion in the Czech Republic during the 20th century

By Kryštof Zeman

Abstract

Background: During the 20th century the Czech Republic went through profound changes in female employment, gender roles, population and family policies, and public childcare. The educational structure of the female population changed tremendously. At the same time, completed cohort fertility fluctuated between 1.8 and 2.2 children per woman.

Objective: This article analyses the changes in the level of completed cohort fertility by education, during educational expansion in the Czech population under the economic, cultural, and institutional background of the state socialist regime, and after its breakdown.

Methods: The changes in the level of completed cohort fertility by education are analysed by means of decomposition, complemented by the analysis of parity composition.

Results: During the 20th century, education-specific completed cohort fertility increased, rather than declined. Fertility levels converged upwards, contributing to high uniformity within educational categories. The overall changes in fertility levels were driven by changes in the educational structure. These trends resulted in the dominance of the two-child family, while large families were disappearing and childlessness dropped to the biological minimum.

Conclusions: An egalitarian economic system with traditional family-friendly policies, in combination with a family-unfriendly labour market, developed into a male breadwinner model of low gender equity. Future family policies should focus on the reconciliation of work and family.

Contribution: The study contributes to the discussion on links between education and fertility, adding a new picture to the mosaic of country-level analyses. The Czech Republic is an example of a country with high educational homogeneity of fertility behaviour where the education-specific levels of fertility converged upwards.

Author’s Affiliation

• Kryštof Zeman - Vienna Institute of Demography (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Austria EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Childlessness in Korea: Role of education, marriage postponement, and marital childlessness
Volume 51 - Article 21

Delayed first births and completed fertility across the 1940–1969 birth cohorts
Volume 48 - Article 15

Cohort fertility decline in low fertility countries: Decomposition using parity progression ratios
Volume 38 - Article 25

Czech Republic: A rapid transformation of fertility and family behaviour after the collapse of state socialism
Volume 19 - Article 14

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