Handbook of Quality of Life in the Enlarged European Union

Jens Alber, Tony Fahey, Chiara Saraceno

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415424677
• eBook ISBN: 9781134095933
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Recent enlargement to the east made the European Union a more diverse social space and brought it into more direct contact with the social and cultural aftermath of communism.

The purpose of this book is to help social scientists, policy makers and other observers cope with the unfamiliarity of this new world by bringing together a collection of informative analyses of key domains of social life in the new member states and candidate countries, viewed in comparison both to each other and to the 'old' EU-15.

The focus is on social conditions, such as social exclusion, poverty and living conditions, work and labour markets, family and housing. But is also offers accounts of the institutional contexts within which these conditions arise. The analyses makes use of a range of data, including a new data source, the European Quality of Life Survey 2003.

Part I
Fertility, families and households

1 Fertility patterns and aspirations in Europe

Tony Fahey

Introduction

The European Commission’s Green Paper on demographic change expressed the view that the EU no longer has a ‘demographic motor’: the Union now has nearly as many deaths as births per year and without inward migration would soon be headed towards population decline (European Commission 2005). The implications for the future of Europe are hard to predict but are unlikely to be good. It is difficult to see how the EU can become the most dynamic and competitive economy in the world, as is the aspiration of the Lisbon agenda, while its population is greying and its workforce shrinking. The key problem is the very low birth rates now found in Europe. At present, the total fertility rate (TFR) in the EU-25 is at about three-quarters of the level needed to replace the population (the TFR is estimated at 1.52 for 2005, while the replacement TFR is conventionally defined as 2.1 – New Cronos 2005). This is one area where the divide between new and old member states is not that significant a part of the EU picture. The ten member states that joined in 2004 have an even weaker reproductive performance than the EU-25 average, with a TFR in that year of 1.27 (Bulgaria and Romania are at a similar level). But a number of EU-15 states also have an equally low TFR so that in this area diversity within the ‘old’ member states is as great as any gap between the old and the new.

While many aspects of low fertility in Europe have been examined by researchers (for recent overviews, see Billari 2005; d’Addio and Mira d’Ercole 2005; United Nations 2003), the feature focused on in this chapter is the gap that has emerged between actual and preferred fertility: the number of children people have is, on average, less than the number they would like to have (Bernardi 2005; d’Addio and Mira d’Ercole 2005: 41–44; Goldstein et al. 2003; Bongaarts 2002: 426–427; van Peer 2002; van de Kaa 1998). Chesnais (1998), for example, points out that while women in Europe on average say they want an average family size of 2.2, the actual total fertility rate is only 1.45. This shortfall, which emerged historically in the course of the transition to low fertility, is the reverse of what is found in high fertility countries, where women typically have more births than they say they want (United Nations Populations Division 1995: 59–67; Bongaarts 1998: 8–11).

The gap between actual and preferred fertility in low fertility countries is not usually included among the quality of life issues studied by researchers who work within the quality of life approach. However, it is known that the family context is one of the strongest social influences on the quality of people’s lives (see Chapter 13: Böhnke, this volume), and having or not having children relates to quite profound aspects of family life. The actual–preferred fertility gap could thus be thought of as having fundamental significance for quality of life. It has also been read by some as having considerable policy significance in the light of the increasing interest in revitalising the EU’s demographic performance. It suggests that governments might be successful in getting Europe’s demographic motor moving again if they adopted appropriate pronatalist policies. For Chesnais (1998), for example, the actual–preferred fertility gap reflects a ‘latent demand for family support’; while for Sleebos (2003: 30) it ‘provides a window of opportunity for policies aimed to increase fertility and to bring it into line with individual preferences’. The European Commission’s Green Paper asserts that ‘if appropriate mechanisms existed to allow couples to have the number of children they want, the fertility could rise overall’ (European Commission 2005: 5). Others may doubt that great weight should be attached to people’s stated preferences for children. Conventional economics assumes that we all want more than we have of all good things, and the compromises we settle for through our behaviour are a better guide to the mix we really want than are our stated preferences. Nevertheless, stated preferences are worth taking into account in the present instance since they indicate that most people still regard children as a good they want more of. This is quite a significant fact, since it indicates that people feel some unease or dissatisfaction with how few children they have had. This is good news for governments concerned about low fertility, since, at the very least, it suggests that family policies aimed at supporting birth rates are likely to be swimming with rather than against a tide of popular preferences. It is another matter whether such policies are likely to be effective, since research has shown that state supports for child-rearing at best have only modest effects on fertility outcomes and are less important than macroeconomic influences, of which buoyant demand for female labour seems to be the most important (Sleebos 2003; d’Addio and Mira d’Ercole 2005). Nevertheless, the actual-preferred fertility gap is worth taking some note of, since it is a part of the context within which the problem of Europe’s demographic weakness might be addressed.

In spite of the interest in the gap between preferred and actual fertility, it has been little analysed from the point of view of its significance for present or future pronatalist policy in low fertility countries. Demographers have regularly included measures of desired fertility in fertility surveys since the 1950s but they have been preoccupied with their value for predicting the future fertility behaviour of women still in their childbearing years rather by the final gap between preferred and actual number of children among those with completed families (from a large literature, see e.g. Freedman et al. 1980, Thomson and Brandreth 1995, Thomson 1997, Schoen et al. 1999; for a rare example of a focus on the gap between preferred and actual family size as an object of interest in its own right, see van Peer 2000). It is this final gap between outcomes and preferences, rather than the predictive value of the preferences, that becomes a matter of central interest when, as here, the concern is with the specific issue of very low fertility rather than with broader explanations of reproductive behaviour.

This chapter first provides some contextual information on fertility trends and patterns in Europe, focusing especially on the question of whether there are broad regional distinctions to be found in these patterns with regard either to west–east distinctions or to differences between ‘families of nations’. The chapter then turns to the gap between actual and preferred family size in Europe. It examines evidence of the extent of the gap and how it has changed over recent decades, and assesses the relevance of that gap from a family policy point of view, with particular reference to its significance for potential pronatalist policy.

1. Context: general patterns

While below-replacement fertility is now the norm in the developed world, and is increasingly common in poorer countries, there is considerable diversity in how far fertility has fallen below replacement levels. In Europe, Billari (2005) classifies countries into those with ‘lowest low’ fertility (a total fertility rate below 1.3), ‘very low’ fertility (below 1.5), and ‘low’ fertility (below 2). This categorisation roughly coincides with a spatial gradient from north-west to south-east Europe (Council of Europe 2005). ‘Low’ fertility is found in a band of countries running roughly along the north-west edge of the continent – the Scandinavian countries, Britain, Ireland and France – while ‘lowest low’ is found along the south and east of Europe – the Mediterranean countries and some of the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The countries lying geographically between these two extremes are in the intermediate ‘very low’ fertility band, with Turkey in the south east forming an exceptional case of relatively high fertility.

The family formation patterns from which these fertility patterns emerge also differ across Europe and indicate that there are different ways of arriving at similar low fertility outcomes. For example, delayed childbearing is often cited as a contributor to very low fertility (Billari 2005) but in eastern Europe countries, where fertility is at the bottom of the range, women give birth at a younger age than they do in northern European countries such as Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Britain and France where fertility is higher (United Nations 2003: 51). A rise in the incidence of childlessness is an important contributor to the emergence of low fertility in some countries (such as Germany, where over 25 per cent of the 1960 birth cohort remained childless compared to less than 10 per cent of birth cohorts of the late 1930s) but not in others (such as France, where the birth cohorts around 1960 had less childlessness than those of the 1930s) (United Nations 2003: 66). One reasonably pronounced feature of the pattern of lowest low fertility found in the former communist new member states is that it is relatively recent (Billari 2005: 59). In 1990, the total fertility rate in countries like Poland (2.20), the Czech Republic (1.90) and Hungary (1.87) was more or less similar to that of the UK (1.83) and France (1.78) but by 2003, the Czech Republic had the lowest fertility rate of the present EU countries (1.18), while Poland (1.22) and Hungary (1.28) were not much higher. Those countries thus made the transition from low to ‘lowest low’ fertility quickly and recently, reflecting an impact on family formation associated with the transition from communism. Italy and Spain, by contrast, countries with similarly low fertility today, were already close to their current position by 1990 (with total fertility rates in that year of 1.33 and 1.36 respectively).

2. Data

The key indicators focused on in this chapter consist of responses to the following questions in surveys of the adult population in Europe (these questions produce the variables as labelled here in brackets):

• What is the ideal number of children for a family? (general ideal number of children)
• What is the ideal number of children for you personally (personal ideal number of children)
• Have you had any children? If yes, how many? (actual number of children)

These three questions were asked in Eurobarometer 56.2 carried out in EU member states (EU-15) in 2001 and the Candidate Country Eurobarometer carried out in 2002 in what were then the 10 accession states (now the new member states – NMS) and the three candidate countries, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey (CC-3). The common variables from these two surveys were compiled into the single 28-country dataset used here by the Social Science Research Centre, Berlin (WZB), as part of a project on living conditions in Europe carried out for the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions in 2003 (Alber and Fahey 2004). This combined dataset is the principal data source used in this chapter. The main focus is on the second and third of the three variables listed above (personal ideal number of children and actual number of children), since they allow us to examine the gap between people’s personal family size preferences and their actual family size for 28 European countries.

The chapter also draws on two further data sources – the European Values Study (EVS) surveys carried out in 1981 and 1990. Eight countries are common to both of these surveys and to Eurobarometer 56.2 mentioned earlier. For these countries, the first variable listed above (general ideal number of children) is measured at each of the three time points. This variable is of limited interest for our purposes because it taps into general social norms about family size rather than personal preferences. However, it has value because it provides a rare trend measure of family size ideals for the two-decade period between 1981 and 2001–2002. It is examined briefly below on that account.

2.1 Classification by age

In examining the gap between ideal and actual fertility across adults of all ages in cross-sectional data, it is necessary to distinguish between what might be termed the ‘final’ gap between ideal and actual fertility among those whose childbearing is completed and the interim gap that arises among younger adults who may yet have more children. The final gap is more important than the interim gap for long-term demographic outcomes and therefore will occupy most of our attention here. For this reason also, the present analysis concentrates on women, since in their case it is possible to identify an age at which, in biological terms, childbearing can be said to be complete. Men’s fertility is not age limited in the same way and so it is more difficult to speak of completed fertility in their case.

In much of the analysis below, we concentrate on the youngest possible segment of women who could be said to have completed fertility, while at the same maintaining reasonable sample size at the country level in the data at our disposal. We therefore frequently focus on women with completed fertility, defined as those who are aged 40–64 and who, if they are aged under 50, have said they plan to have no more children. Even though the age-range of this group is narrowed down as far as sample size considerations will allow, the childbearing time span of the women involved is quite wide. In the case of the 2001 data, for example, the oldest women in the age group 40–64 would have entered their childbearing years in the late 1950s, while the youngest would be arriving at the end of their childbearing years at around the time of the survey. The childbearing time span represented by these women, therefore, amounts to most of the second half of the twentieth century. This indicates the difficulty of linking cross-sectional data of this kind to short-term temporal patterns of fertility, and so drawing conclusions about time trends that might be of interest to policy.

3. The role of education

The effect of educational level on the ideal-actual fertility gap is viewed here as a useful means of elucidating what that gap signifies. The measure of education level used is respondents’ age when they left full-time education. While this is a crude measure, it provides a serviceable basis for classifying education in a comparable way across countries. For the present analysis, we use a three-fold classification of the age at which people left full-time education: under age 16 years, between 16 and 19 years, and 20 years or over.

The focus on education is adopted here partly for methodological reasons, reflecting the technical character of education as a proxy measure of socio-economic status that is stable over the adult life course and independent of fertility. In cross-sectional data such as are used here, education can be used as a measure of socio-economic background not only at the point of observation but also prior to or during a person’s childbearing years: for the most part, people complete their education before they begin childbearing, and their educational level does not change as their family formation proceeds. There may be exceptions to this rule (e.g. young women who drop out of education to have children) but in the fertility regimes found in Europe in the latter part of the twentieth century, these exceptions are unlikely to be common enough to render invalid the assumption that education is independent of fertility. Other possible measures of socio-economic background, such as current employment status, occupation and income, are not independent of fertility in the same way since they are subject to change through the family cycle and in particular may be affected by the number or timing of children that a person might have.

In addition to the methodological significance of education, it is also important because, as Cleland (2003: 187) states, ‘education of adults consistently emerges as the single most powerful predictor of their demographic behaviour’. In less developed societies, women’s education first causes a short-term rise in fertility, because of increased fecundity, reduced risk of foetal death, and the decline of traditional practices such as prolonged breastfeeding and postpartum abstinence (United Nations 1995: 23). As societies begin to develop, education causes fertility to fall both because of individual-level effects on resources and incentives and community-level effects on cultural norms regarding family size (Caldwell 1980; Castro Martin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction: EU enlargement and quality of life: The context and purpose of this book
• Part I Fertility, families and households
• Part II Employment and working conditions
• Part III Material living conditions
• Part IV Social capital and social cohesion
• Part V Processes of Europeanisation