Partnership and Reproductive Behaviour in Law Fertility Countries

The number of countries with period total fertility rates at or below replacement increased from 5 in 1960 to 64 in 2000. Patterns of partnership and reproductive behaviours vary substantially among these 64 countries even though total fertility rates vary within a relatively small range. The demographic transition from high to replacement fertility was essentially associated with the implementation of reproductive choices within marital unions. The post-transitional developments are driven mostly by the transformations of partnership behaviour. During the last decades of the twentieth century, the family as a social institution changed, obligation and commitment with regard to formal marriage eroded, and new forms of partnership proliferated in may countries. The range of options for individuals expanded. These options are a permanent or much more prolonged state of celibacy, and engagement in partnerships that do not assume formal contractual status and may or may not involve childbearing. The diversification of partnerships that do not assume formal contractual status and may or may not involve strict social norms when choosing the path of union formation. Marriage and parenthood are drifting apart and the sequences of events in personal biographies are no longer standardized. However, in the recent past, these transformations were confined mostly to Northern and Western Europe and Northern America, while formal marriage remained the nearly exclusive form of conjugal union in most countries of Eastern and Southern Europe and Eastern Asia. The age at, and the prevalence of , marriage are the other dimensions of partnership. The respective levels and trends var across regions. Since the Second World War, the age at marriage, which for a long time had been relatively high in the Est with the notable exception of he United States, had further increased by two to three years notwithstanding the transitory fall during the baby boom. In some countries, the age at first marriage for females approached 30 years - close to the end of the prime reproductive lifespan. In Eastern European countries, the age at first marriage started to increase in the 1990s, but still does not exceed 25 years. High proportions of never-married women past age 30 or 35, which are typical for most Western countries, are indicative of the substantial loss of opportunities for childbearing within formal marital unions. Rapidly growing celibacy among younger women will most probably raise further the proportion of women who never marry during their reproductive lifespan. Although in Eastern Europe, formal marriage remains highly popular among women in prime reproductive age, its prevalence began to decline. The parallel and abrupt fall of the total marriage rate, which occurred in the 1990s in most developed countries and attained 0.6 to 0.7 first marriage per women, suggests that formal marriage is receding everywhere. In Northern and Western Europe and the United States, the spread of cohabitation compensates for the delay of formal marriage and the decrease of nuptiality during the reproductive lifespan: the proportion of women, who, by age 25, have entered either a formal or an informal union, remains stable at 70 to 80 per cent. In Southern Europe, cohabitation does not compensate for delayed formal marriage: as a result, only 65 to 75 per cent of women have entered a first relationship by age 25. Eastern Asia is similar to Southern Europe. By historical standards and in comparison with most developing countries, fertility levels in all developed countries are two but diverse. The total fertility rate ranges from 1.2 children per woman in Eastern Europe, Eastern Asia and Southern Europe to 2.0 in the United States. Period rates understate the true fertility levels because of the massive postponement of births. The international variation of fertility levels is less apparent from the cohort perspective because cohort indicators are not affected by postponement effects and, probably, because they reflect a rather distant past when the results of reproductive behaviour were more homogeneous than they may be for the younger cohorts.