POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW 28(4):641–680 (DECEMBER 2002) 641 The Emergence of Lowest-Low Fertility in Europe During the 1990s

THE MAJORITY OF the world’s population is living in countries with near-replacement or below-replacement fertility. As a result the earlier distinct fertility regimes, “developed ” and “developing, ” are increasingly disappear-ing in global comparisons of fertility levels (Bongaarts and Bulatao 2000; Lutz, Sanderson, and Scherbov 2001; Wilson 2001). At least three aspects of this convergence toward low fertility are particularly striking. First, the spread of below-replacement fertility to formerly high-fertility countries has occurred at a rapid pace and implies a global convergence of fertility indica-tors that has been quicker than the convergence of many other socioeco-nomic characteristics. Second, earlier notions that fertility levels may natu-rally stabilize close to replacement level have been dispelled.1 In the early 1990s, for instance, Italy and Spain were the first countries to attain and sustain lowest-low fertility levels, which we define in this article as a level of the total fertility rate (TFR) at or below 1.3. At the end of the 1990s 14 countries in Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe with a total population exceeding 370 million had TFRs below 1.3. Third, recent fertility trends in developed countries have been accompanied by a remarkable divergence in fertility levels, ranging in the late 1990s from lowest-low fertility to TFR levels above 1.7 in France and Denmark and close to 2.1 in the United States. In this article we investigate the emergence of lowest-low fertility in Europe, analyze its demographic patterns and socioeconomic determinants, and address the factors that underlie the divergence of fertility levels in Eu-rope and developed countries more generally. The central thrust of our ar-gument is that lowest-low fertility in Europe has emerged from the combi-nation of five distinct demographic and behavioral factors. First, demographi