Beyond the Economic Gaze: Childbearing during and after recessions in the Nordic countries

Abstract

<p>Abstract: During the 2010s, fertility rates fell across the Nordic region. The onset of these<br />declines seems linked to the Great Recession of 2008–2009 but their continuation cannot easily<br />be linked to subsequent economic change. The 1990s, too, brought episodes of economic crises<br />to the Nordic region that were followed by different degrees of fertility decline. In this study,<br />we provide an empirical overview of parity-, age- and education-specific fertility developments<br />in the five Nordic countries in the wake of the economic recessions in 2008 and the early 1990s,<br />respectively. We demonstrate a high degree of heterogeneity in fertility developments across<br />countries after 1990, whereas after 2008, the trends are much more similar across the five<br />countries. Likewise, the educational differences in birth hazards that characterized the<br />developments after 1990 were much smaller in the initial years after 2008–2009. This reversal<br />from heterogeneity to homogeneity in the fertility response to recessions calls for an expansion<br />of theories on the cyclicality of fertility in relation to uncertainty and economic and social<br />change. In our discussion, we consider the role of a set of factors that also incorporates the state,<br />crisis management, and perceptions of economic and welfare uncertainty.<br /></p>