Fecundity Curve of Contemporary Europe

Eva Beaujouan, University of Vienna (Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital)
Marcus Immonen Hagley, University of Vienna
Katja Köppen, Universität Rostock

Have we become more fecund compared to the past? The ability to have children is affected by environmental factors and changing lifestyles. Given the modern technological transformations, fecundity should be higher than in the past, linked to improvements in nutrition and health. On the other hand, the increase of toxins and unhealthy lifestyle should have a negative impact. We calculate the contemporary fecundity curve and compare it to historical fecundity curves. We use the German family panel pairfam, an annual longitudinal individual-level survey covering the years 2008/2009-2022, to provide an up-to-date assessment of women's and men's chances of having a child as a function of the age at which they start trying within a couple. There is a large variability in past fecundity curves, and our curve is overall in the highest range at young and mid-reproductive ages. At high reproductive ages (from around age 35 at first attempt to have a child), the chances to ever have a child decrease as quickly as in the past.

Keywords: Fertility, Data and Methods

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