Comparative Population Studies (CPoS - E-Journal)
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Fertility Intentions Across Five Decades in Norway
Full text linkFertility intentions are strong predictors of future childbearing at both individual and aggregate levels, reflecting cultural norms and values around family formation and childbearing. Given the recent decline in fertility across Western industrialized societies, research on fertility intentions has become increasingly important. In particular, falling birth rates in the Nordic countries − traditionally held up as exemplars of modern family policies that balance work and parenthood − raise the question of whether women of childbearing age have experienced a shift in values related to family and childbearing. Using comparable survey data on Norwegian women aged 18 to 44 over five decades (1977, 1988, 2003, 2007, and 2020), we examine trends in fertility intentions. We consider short-term fertility intentions, defined as positive intentions to have a(nother) child within the next three to four years, as well as general fertility intentions, defined as positive intentions to have a(nother) child regardless of timing. We compare changes over the study period across demographic (age, parenthood, and partnership statuses) and socioeconomic (employment and education) groups. Our results reveal a gradual shift in short-term fertility intentions toward older age groups, reflecting changes in age-specific fertility rates and rising levels of childlessness. By 2020, both short-term and general fertility intentions had declined to their lowest levels over the study period − a trend that persisted even after controlling for key background characteristics. From 2007 to 2020, we observe a consistent decline in both types of fertility intentions across all sociodemographic groups. The decline in short-term fertility intentions began earlier among young women, childless women, women in education, and women without a co-residential partner − groups previously identified as experiencing sharper fertility declines after 2010 in the Nordic countries. The early and uniform downturn across key subgroups suggests that changing family values and life-course expectations may be driving the recent fertility decline
Reflections on CPoS: A Journey Across Five Decades
Full text linkIn this editorial, Michaela Kreyenfeld, former board member, author and reviewer, reflects on her own experiences with and the evolution and significance of Comparative Population Studies (CPoS), formerly Zeitschrift für Bevölkerungswissenschaft (ZfB), highlighting its role as a dedicated, rigorous platform for demographic and population research. CPoS embraces core demographic topics as well as interdisciplinary approaches, exemplified for example by seminal works on fertility, demographic transitions, and sociological theory. Valued for fairness, accessibility, and intellectual integrity, CPoS offers a respected venue for both emerging and established scholars.
* This article belongs to a series celebrating the journal's 50th anniversary
The Impact of Refugee Shocks on Host Countries: A Scoping Review
Full text linkThis article provides a systematic overview of the academic literature on the impact of ″refugee shocks“ – the sudden arrival of large numbers of refugees – on host countries. A scoping review was conducted using Google Scholar in September 2022 to describe the literature, drawing on 4,576 effects from 123 quantitative studies with no restrictions on countries, year of publication, type of publication, or the reported topics. This broad scope acknowledges that refugee shocks potentially affect many areas of life. A synthesis was carried out by aggregating and using regression models. We find an increase in studies on refugee shocks after 2015 and that the most commonly studied shocks took place in the Middle East and Europe. About two-thirds of the effects concern economic outcomes in the host country, while few cover health or environmental outcomes. Across topics, about half of the analyses indicate no statistically significant effect. Studies generally report normatively positive effects on education and generally negative effects on wages and employment in the host country. Refugee shocks tend to be associated with an increase in votes for the radical right. Future studies should address refugee shocks beyond the Western countries that are studied most closely and focus on understanding the dynamics of how different actors react to the arrival of refugees
Cross-border Reproductive Care in Czechia: Insights from National Registry Data
Full text linkCross-border reproductive care (CBRC) represents a growing component of assisted reproductive technologies (ART), particularly in Europe. This article presents a descriptive, register-based analysis of CBRC in Czechia, focusing on the volume of ART cycles, the countries of origin of patients, and treatment types in comparison with domestic patients.
We analysed 176,588 ART cycles recorded in the Czech National Registry of Assisted Reproduction (NRAR) between 2016 and 2019. Patients were classified by country of residence, nationality, and insurance status. Descriptive statistics were used to identify patterns in terms of patient characteristics and treatment choices. The analysis was contextualised with reference to national ART legislation in selected source countries.
The findings revealed that nearly 40 percent of ART cycles in Czechia are attributable to CBRC, making the country one of Europe’s leading destinations for cross-border fertility treatment. The largest groups of CBRC patients are from Germany, Italy, Slovakia, the UK, France, Serbia, Ireland, and Hungary. Women who seek CBRC in Czechia are significantly older than their Czech counterparts, with a modal age of 41 years compared to 38 years, respectively, for IVF/ICSI cycles and 43 years compared to 38 years, respectively, for cycles in which a woman receives donated eggs. Moreover, the treatment preferences of CBRC patients differ markedly: they are more likely to undergo frozen embryo transfer (FET) cycles (37 percent vs. 30 percent among Czech patients) and egg receipt (OoR) cycles (32 percent vs. 3 percent among Czech patients).
The study provides a unique, data-driven perspective on the dynamics of cross-border reproductive care in Czechia, drawing on comprehensive national registry data. By identifying key source countries and differences in treatment preferences, it highlights Czechia’s growing role in the European reproductive care landscape and sheds light on how legal, demographic, and economic conditions shape cross-border patient mobility in Europe
50 Years of Communicating Demographic and Population Research in Germany
Full text linkIn his editorial, former CPoS editor Johannes Huinink reflects on his personal experiences with the journal as author, advisory board member and editor. He emphasizes the importance of scholarly debates, efforts to include contributions from the Global South, and shares his perspectives for the journal’s continued development and success. He focuses on both the ZfB and CPoS years. The ZfB played a key role in re-establishing demography as a scientific discipline in Germany. Since its relaunch in 2010 as CPoS, the journal has become an internationally recognized, English-language open-access platform with a strong focus on thematic Special Issues.
* This article belongs to a series celebrating the journal's 50th anniversary
Changes in Birth Seasonality in East and West Germany, 1946-2017
Full text linkSeasonal trends in fertility are found in several contexts and are affected by societal and environmental factors. This paper documents how birth seasonality in East and West Germany changed over time and, in particular, after 1989 and the onset of Reunification. We use birth counts by month from the Human Fertility Database, broken down into East and West Germany, from 1946 to 2017. We observe similar birth seasonality in East and West Germany in the years from 1946 to the 1970s, with an initial peak occurring in the first months of the year followed by a second peak in September. In the 1970s, West Germany starts to diverge, with the emergence of a single peak in births in late summer. Shortly after Reunification, the seasonal fertility trends found in West Germany are mirrored in East Germany. Consequently, it appears that the socioeconomic, cultural and institutional differences in the two areas have potentially influenced the intra-annual distribution of births, as well as the timing and number of children as described in previous studies
Reflections on Population Studies in the Age of AI
Full text linkIn his editorial, former editor of Comparative Population Studies (CPoS) Frans Willekens reflects on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in population studies. Effective and responsible use of any tool requires a basic understanding of how it works, when it may be used, and when its use should be avoided. When this fundamental principle is observed, AI tools can enrich learning and research and help advance the frontiers of knowledge. Epistemic integrity and accountability remain essential; the advent of AI does not diminish that core value. Although generative AI is currently dominated by machine learning and relies on statistical inference to make predictions and generate content, rule-based AI, which dominated AI in the early days, is making a comeback. Students of population should critically engage with the expanding landscape of AI systems and resist the tendency towards technological monoculture. They should cultivate substantive collaborations with computer scientists to develop domain-specific AI systems that fully prepare population studies − with demography at its core − for the era of AI.
* This article belongs to a series celebrating the journal's 50th anniversary
Health Expectancy: Increasingly Used, but Not Well Understood
Full text linkGood health is central to human happiness and well-being. It contributes substantially to economic progress, as healthy populations live longer and are more productive. The corresponding public health policies are typically assessed based on a structural indicator for “Health Expectancy” (HE) such as the EU’s “Healthy Life Years” (HLY) or the WHO’s “Health-Adjusted Life Expectancy” (HALE). Unfortunately, HE estimates are extremely sensitive to methodological choices, an issue that is widely overlooked. First, the common practice of measuring population health by the distribution of responses to specific survey questions is ambiguous and not straightforward. Consequently, levels and trends of HE vary significantly depending on the underlying data and health indicators. Moreover, HE estimates are also highly sensitive to technical features, such as the age range and partitioning selected for analysis, as well as the technique chosen to add the health dimension to the life table; an issue that has gone remarkably unrecognized. With the aim of filling this important research gap, the European Research Council (ERC) funded a Consolidator Grant project entitled “Levels and trends of health expectancy: understanding its measurement and estimation sensitivity” (LETHE). This special issue of Comparative Population Studies (CPoS) marks the completion of this project. It contains five articles, each dealing with a specific aspect of HE computation or a concrete empirical application based on HE indicators. This editorial summarizes the insights gained during the LETHE project and aims to make users of HE aware of its methodological sensitivities through illustrative empirical examples. A better understanding of these issues is essential to ensure the indicators’ appropriate usage in research as well as in advising policy makers and public health officials.
* This is the Editorial on the Special Issue "Levels and Trends of Health Expectancy: Understanding its Measurement and Estimation Sensitivity"
Partners’ Age Difference and Marital Dissolution in Italy. A Cohort Comparison
Full text linkAmong the factors related to marital disruption, age assortative mating (who marries whom in terms of age) has received less attention than others. In this study, we study the association between partners’ age difference and marital disruption in Italy, a late-comer country in divorce legislation and highly conservative in its culture and institutions. We also show how this association varies across marriage cohorts. We employ data from “Families, social subjects and life cycle” (FSS), collected in 2016 by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat). We analyse micro-level retrospective information on first-marriage histories between the 1970s and the 1990s through an event-history approach. Results show that age hypogamous couples (where the woman is older than the man) have a higher likelihood of marital disruption compared to couples where the wife is the same age or younger than her husband. However, this higher risk reduces among the youngest cohorts. We discuss the possible drivers of this change in light of cultural changes that occurred in recent decades.
* This article belongs to a special issue on “Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences”
Three Decades on Russia’s Path of the Second Demographic Transition: How Patterns of Fertility are Changing Under an Unstable Demographic Policy
Full text linkThis study aims to highlight the changes in fertility patterns of Russians which occurred after the USSR’s dissolution or disintegration, taking a long historical perspective. After that disruption, thirty cohorts were born and raised who never lived under the Soviet system. Fifteen more cohorts (those who were born between 1975 and 1990) remember that system only as a part of childhood, but their adult life started after the iron curtain had fallen and a flood of new ideas and practices spilled into all spheres of life.
At the same time, the increased concern among the Russian elite about the declining population and low birth rates led to the adoption of a pronatalist family policy based on monetarist approaches reinforced by conservative-traditionalist ideology.
Our main research question asks: To what extent did state social and family policies in Russia, which are based on the ideology of traditionalism and conservatism, derail or slow down the modernization of the quantitative and structural parameters of fertility patterns within the Second Demographic Transition context?
Our analysis is based on indicators from period and cohort fertility tables, specific for age and parity. Extrapolations are used for Russia’s female cohorts born 1971-1994 to arrive at expected ultimate fertility outcomes.
Our evidence, obtained from the comprehensive analysis of fertility tables, reveals that the transformation of the Russian fertility model continues to be in line with the Second Demographic Transition common to developed countries, and that two decades of active pronatalist policy in the context of strengthening the conservative family ideology did not stop the modernization of fertility patterns.
* This article belongs to a special issue on “Demographic Developments in Eastern and Western Europe Before and After the Transformation of Socialist Countries”