Two is best? The persistence of a two-child family ideal in Europe

Abstract

How persistent and universal has the two child family ideal been in Europe during the last three decades? We analyze responses of women of reproductive age from 168 surveys conducted in 37 countries in 1979-2012. A two-child ideal has become nearly universal among women in all parts of Europe. Countries that used to display higher ideal family size have converged over time toward a two-child model. Six out of ten women in Europe consider two children as ideal, and this proportion is very similar in different regions. The mean ideal family size has become closely clustered around 2.2 in most countries. Gradual shifts can be documented toward more women expressing an ideal of having one child (and, quite rarely, having no children) and a parallel decline in an ideal of three or more children. An increasing number of European countries saw their mean ideal family size falling to relatively low levels around 1.95-2.15. However, with the exception of one survey for eastern Germany and two of the surveys not included in our study owing to high nonresponse or low sample size, none of the analyzed surveys suggests a decline in mean ideal family size to levels considerably below replacement, i.e., below 1.9 children per woman.