Policy Responses to Low Fertility and its Consequences: a Global Survey

Abstract

The consequences of low fertility depend on just how low fertility has fallen and how long it has been at that level. Table 14.1 lists very low fertility countries (total fertility rate (TFR) below 1.5), moderately low fertility countries (TFR 1.5–2.0), and countries at replacement level, together with their TFRs in 2001 and the period that the TFR had been continually below 2.1. The last measure is probably open to question for some countries as it depends on the ability of the United Nations (2001) Population Division to reconstruct past fertility levels. In the West, fertility began to fall widely after 1965, at first because of a reduction in the proportion of high-parity births (Prioux 1990). Japan followed in 1973 (Retherford, Ogawa and Sakimoto 1996). By the 1990s the TFR had fallen below one in several northern Italian provinces and in the area that had previously been East Germany (Cliquet 1991:136; Witte and Wagner 1995:389; Conrad, Lechner and Werner 1996:349).