Later fertility in Europe: How far can fertility be postponed without being forgone?

Austrian Science Fund

In times when fertility is undergoing unprecedented changes through the medicalisation of conception, the question of “how late can you wait” is more salient than ever. In Europe, age at family formation is increasing and childlessness is on the rise, particularly among highly educated women. We aim to study the shift to later fertility for men and women with different levels of education, and its implications for family size. Our comparative study will cover selected European countries, with a special focus on Austria and France, two countries with contrasting fertility levels and representing different welfare systems.
We first take an individual-level perspective in order to understand who postpones childbearing, and to analyse whether women and men having a first child or a union at later reproductive ages “accelerate” the birth of their (next) child compared with those experiencing this event at younger ages. Next, we use microsimulation to estimate the impact of key individual mechanisms of delayed childbearing on aggregate fertility levels. Particularly, we consider different scenarios to infer a range of possible fertility responses to changes in partnership dynamics and educational attainment, and to take into account the increasing relevance of assisted reproduction technologies in the cohorts still of childbearing age. We complement this analysis by studying the aggregate cohort trends towards later fertility, and estimating how many people trying for children later in life might be constrained by biological and normative limits to childbearing. Building up on our findings, we will discuss the consequences of continued delay in childbearing on future fertility and family size.