Fertility Decline in the West: Causes and Prospects

It seems ironic, if not perverse, that as problems of rapid growth in the developing countries of the world have captured the concern of many governments and international agencies, a small but increasing number of voices are raising concern in some advanced countries about the opposite problem-the of low fertility and impending decline. While the government of Mexico worries about the costs of educating its numerous children (with 42 percent of the under 15 years of age), the government of West Germany is concerned with the costs of supporting the aged, with one-sixth of its aged 65 and over. At the same time that the Chinese government is promoting the norm of the one-child family and economically penalizing those who exceed two, the government of France is offering 10,000 francs to couples having a third or later birth. The population problem of the West first appeared in the 1930s and gave rise to fears of economic stagnation and of inundation by foreign labor. With the advent of World War II, these fears subsided and were soon replaced in some countries with new problems of expansion associated with postwar baby booms. But in the late 1960s and 1970s, fertility rates again declined rapidly, with the total fertility rate currently reaching a low of 1.4 in West Germany and Denmark and falling below the replacement level of 2.1 in all other Western countries except Ireland and in several Eastern European countries. Some of the Eastern European countries managed to increase their fertility slightly, presumably with various kinds of incentive systems and in some instances by making abortion more difficult to secure, but fertility declines are once again evident in Rumania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. The prevailing speculation is that the increases are short-lived and that the primary forces of social change conducive to later marriage and low fertility will persist. For most countries, this low level of fertility has not yet been perceived as a demanding government response. The general lack of official