Karel NEELS
2003-2004
Abstract:
The PhD-dissertation of K. Neels on postponement and recuperation of fertility in Belgium uses data from the 1991 census to estimate trends in the tempo and quantum of nuptiality as well as evolutions in tempo and quantum of birth order-specific Belgian fertility between 1960 and 1990. In addition, cohort profiles of nuptiality and birth order-specific fertility are generated for cohorts of women born between 1921 and 1975. Subsequently, the cohort profiles of nuptiality and birth order-specific fertility are differentiated in terms of the educational level of women, female labour force participation and regional settings. This link between demographic variables and socio-economic characteristics of women offers opportunities to test the validity of economic and cultural explanations of demographic change as well as theories stressing diffusion. Extensive validation of demographic indicators calculated from the 1991 census indicates that the bias associated with the retrospective research design is limited. Cross-sectional measures of total fertility can be reliably reconstructed from retrospective data between 1960 and 1990. Similarly, cohort completed fertility levels and cohort mean ages at childbearing can be reliably reconstructed for cohorts born between 1918 and 1951, although a noticeable improvement can be discerned for cohorts born after 1930. Deviations do emerge, however, between the birth order-specific fertility measures calculated retrospectively from the 1991 census and birth order-specific measures drawn from vital registration as a result of diverging definitions of birth order. The order-specific measures drawn from the 1991 census refer to the biological order of birth, whereas vital statistics classify births by their order in the current marriage. With respect to nuptiality, retrospective calculation yields an overestimation of the period total female first marriage rate starting from the mid 1960s. As far as cohort data are concerned, validation against vital registration suggests that female first marriage propensities are overestimated by roughly 1 per cent for the more recent cohorts of women born after 1945. Unfortunately, the 1991 census does not provide data on cohabitation or entry into consensual unions. Finally, the analysis on the quality of demographic data in the 1991 census indicates that information concerning parity, first marriage and the maternity history is generally poorer for foreign women. As a result, the analysis in the project have been restricted to women having the Belgian nationality on March 1st 1991, excluding non-response and women with inconsistencies in their histories of marital status or maternity histories.
Most important results:
The issue of fertility postponement and recuperation is a central aspect of K. Neels’ work on Belgian cohort fertility patterns, reconstructed according to several covariates measured in the 1991 census. This is the most detailed study ever in Belgium on cohort fertility. The results of the research project indicate that the trends in order-specific fertility have been largely independent over the period considered. The marked decline of first-order births since the mid 1960s reflects the ongoing postponement of family formation rather than a substantial increase in childlessness. The MAC for first births indicates that postponement of first births already started in the early 1970s. As a result, conventional measures of birth order-specific fertility such as the PTFR1 have been severely deflated between 1975 and 1990 reaching a low of 0.65 in the mid 1980s. The tempo-adjusted PTFR1’, the synthetic parity progression ratio to first births and birth-order-specific cohort data, however, suggest that the percentage of women having a first child has been stable around 80 per cent throughout the period considered. The analysis of cohort fertility profiles indicates that the combination of labour force participation and postponed fertility is already characteristic of higher educated women born in the early 1920s. Hence, the trend of fertility postponement surfacing in the mid 1970s does not reflect the emergence of entirely new patterns of family formation but rather the ongoing increase of female educational attainment and labour force participation. The results for second births indicate that the mean age of women at the birth of the second child has also increased with the parity progression ratio to second births has been fairly stable around 75 per cent despite a temporary setback in the mid 1970s. An entirely different pattern emerges, however, for third and higher-order births. As of the mid 1960s, progression to third and higher-order births has decreased substantially regardless of educational level, labour force participation and regional settings.
Book:
Karel Neels (2006),
Reproductive strategies in Belgian fertility, NIDI / CBGS Publications nr. 38, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht: 314 p.
Patterns of nuptiality and fertility changed profoundly in Belgium over the last few decades. Since the mid-1960s the Belgian nuptiality regime is characterised by a fall in proportions marrying, rising mean ages at first marriage, increasing unmarried cohabitation and rising divorce. The fertility regime is characterised by increasing mean ages at first parenthood, the emergence of structural subreplacement fertility, rising non-marital fertility and rising definitive childlessness in unions. This volume provides a comprehensive reconstruction of the trends in Belgian nuptiality and birth-order-specific fertility between 1960 and 1990. Using anonymous data from the 1991 census, patterns of demographic behaviour are reconstructed for women born between 1921 and 1965 and linked to individual characteristics such as educational attainment and labour force participation experience as well as regional contexts. The analyses indicate that the aggregate trends emerging since the mid-1960s are not consistently related at the individual level and reveal long-standing heterogeneity in the demographic behaviour of Belgian women.
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