Laboratory

Fertility and Well-Being

At a Glance Projects Publications Team

Project

Fertility Dynamics and Patterns in High-Income Countries (Dissertation)

Aijie Zhang, Mikko Myrskylä, Henrik-Alexander Schubert, Zafer Büyükkeçeci, Hill Kulu (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom), Sarah Christison (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)

Detailed Description

The project investigates recent fertility trends in high-income countries and how fertility dynamics are related to changes in individuals’ other life domains (e.g., partnerships, education, employment, housing) and to changes in their socioeconomic context.

The project starts with a cross-country comparison by exploring age- and parity-specific fertility patterns in high-income countries using aggregated data from the Human Fertility Database. The work provides an overview of regional fertility patterns and documents how recent fertility dynamics differ across countries.

Subsequent work builds on these descriptive findings by using individual-level register or survey data to examine fertility patterns and the potential mechanisms underlying fertility decline in the Nordic countries and the UK. This stage of the project focuses on how changes in partnership formation patterns, labor market trajectories, housing conditions, and economic uncertainty shape entry into parenthood, applying advanced quantitative methods to identify heterogeneity across social groups and life course stages.