IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/gkqw6_v1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Role of Childlessness in Changes in English Cohort Fertility

Author

Listed:
  • Ermisch, John

Abstract

The aim of the study is to explore the contribution of childlessness to changes in English cohort fertility over time and in relation to that in other European countries. The study found that during important historical periods of change in English completed fertility a change in childlessness played a very important role: contributing 56% of the large rise in fertility (of 0.42 children per woman) between the 1920 and 1934 cohorts and 44% of the large fall (0.44) between the 1934 and 1960 cohorts. But for more recent cohorts (born since 1960) changes in childlessness played a varying but usually minor role in accounting for changes in English cohort fertility compared with other countries. The paper shows that there are, however, countries in which a rise in childlessness has made large contributions to a large decline in their cohort fertility since the 1960 cohort (e.g. Japan, Spain and Poland). Also, high current levels of childlessness in these countries are an important reason why their cohort fertility is so low compared to England and some other countries of Northern and Western Europe (e.g. Sweden, France and the Netherlands). Based on information on fertility intentions and historical experience it is argued that that changes in childlessness were mainly the result of an accumulation of usually unpredictable period influences on fertility.

Suggested Citation

  • Ermisch, John, 2025. "The Role of Childlessness in Changes in English Cohort Fertility," SocArXiv gkqw6_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:gkqw6_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/gkqw6_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/68a6db93287680761695055a/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/gkqw6_v1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:gkqw6_v1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.