EDUCATION AND HEALTH OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN Vanishing Children: From High Unemployment to Low Fertility in Developed Countries

During the last four decades the average total fertility rate in OECD countries witnessed a dramatic fall: from 2.9 in 1960 to 2.0 in 1975 and then to 1.6 in the late 1990s (reaching 1.25 in Southern Europe). With the exception of the United States, all advanced countries now have fertility rates well below the replacement rate of 2.1. In the absence of either sharp changes in fertility behavior or large inflows of immi-grants, their populations are set to shrink, par-ticularly in Europe. Still, within this generalized fall, cross-national differences in fertility be-havior have remained significant. By 2000, fer-tility rates ranged from 2.1 in the United States and over 1.8 in France and Norway to less tha