Volume 5 - Article 5 | Pages 125–186  

Cohort Reproductive Patterns in the Nordic Countries

By Tomas Frejka, Gerard Calot

Abstract

Total fertility rates were declining from peaks experienced by early 1930s cohorts for 20 successive cohorts. The decline ceased among the 1950s and 1960s cohorts, because fertility deficits of young women were compensated with increased fertility when women reached their late twenties and thirties. The relative stability of completed fertility of these cohorts is attributed to Nordic social policies. Fertility deficits of young women in 1970s cohorts are comparatively large. For their completed fertility to be similar to that of earlier ones, there is considerably more catching up to do.
What remains an open issue is whether social policies will be sufficiently effective for couples born in the late 1960s and the 1970s to have births not born earlier in their lives.

Author’s Affiliation

• Tomas Frejka - Independent researcher, International EMAIL
• Gerard Calot - Observatoire Européen de la Démographie et de la Situation Sociale, France EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

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Overview Chapter 3: Birth regulation in Europe: Completing the contraceptive revolution
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Overview Chapter 2: Parity distribution and completed family size in Europe: Incipient decline of the two-child family model
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Overview Chapter 1: Fertility in Europe: Diverse, delayed and below replacement
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Summary and general conclusions: Childbearing Trends and Policies in Europe
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