Fertility in High-Income Countries: Trends, Patterns, Determinants, and Consequences

In the paper

“This tendency can essentially be attributed to five causes: ( a ) increasingly effective family policies (for a survey, see Olivetti & Petrongolo 2017), in particular in the areas of public childcare (Bauernschuster et al. 2016, d'Albis et al. 2017), family leave (Lalive &Zweimüller 2009, Raute 2019), taxation (Bick & Fuchs-Schündeln 2018), and benefit schemes (Riphahn & Wiynck 201”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The citation is attached specifically to “increasingly effective family policies (for a survey, see Olivetti & Petrongolo 2017),” not to the entire list of five causes. The Abstract identifies the paper as a review of family policies and their effects on female employment and fertility; the Conclusions identify early childhood spending and in-work benefits as policies with strong evidence for reducing gender disparities. The paper also cautions that evidence for extended parental leave is less favorable. (LLM, conf=0.92)

  cites Olivetti & Petrongolo 2017 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Bauernschuster et al. 2016 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Goldin & Katz 2002 source

In the paper

“Here, fertility is delayed but whether or not it can be recuperated depends on the socioeconomic and policy context (see, e.g., Sobotka 2004, Beaujouan 2020, Hwang 2023).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Sobotka 2004 source
• Partly supported

  The Discussion and research avenues section (page unavailable) says fertility postponement arises from changing economic conditions and that people who wish to have children need support. The paper also describes cross-country differences in late births and ART laws, but it does not establish that socioeconomic and policy context determines whether postponed fertility is recuperated. (LLM, conf=0.82)

  cites Beaujouan 2020 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• Partly supported

  The Cohort Trends in Marriage and Fertility section reports that South Korean women delayed childbirth and that later births did not fully make up for the decline among the 1970s cohorts. The discussion identifies socioeconomic and policy conditions as possible explanations, but says causal effects are outside the study’s scope. It therefore supports the claim’s broad idea, not a definite finding that those conditions determine whether delayed fertility is recuperated. (LLM, conf=0.84)

  cites Hwang 2023 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“Related research finds that differences in exposure to globalization across industries imply a fertility decline among individuals working in industries that are negatively affected and a fertility increase among those working in industries that are expected to benefit (Autor et al. 2019, Giuntella et al. 2022).”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  In section C, the paper reports that trade shocks reduce births among women ages 20–39, while shocks to female-intensive employment raise births. Its analysis concerns local trade exposure and fertility rates, not fertility among individuals working in negatively affected versus benefiting industries; it does not establish the claimed increase for workers in benefiting industries. (LLM, conf=0.88)

  cites Autor et al. 2019 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• Supported

  Split into 2 atoms — 2 confirmed, 0 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.

  cites Giuntella et al. 2022 source

In the paper

“Matysiak et al. (2021) find that the Great Recession has strengthened the decline in fertility for most European countries. The impact was most pronounced in Southern and Eastern Europe and muted in Western and, especially, Northern Europe.”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  The Abstract reports stronger fertility decline during the recession and a weaker association with recession indicators in Western Europe, especially the Nordic countries. But it locates the strongest declines in Southern Europe, Ireland, and parts of Central and Eastern Europe—not Eastern Europe generally. The Empirical Findings likewise report little or no recession-induced decline in some regions. (LLM, conf=0.83)

  cites Matysiak et al. 2021 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“Norms have been shown to be both contagious across space (Spolaore & Wacziarg 2022) and persistent across socioeconomic peer groups (e.g., Bauernschuster & Rainer 2012, Chabé-Ferret 2019).”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The Spolaore and Wacziarg citation is attached to the claim that norms spread across space, not to the separate claim about socioeconomic peer groups. The Conclusion (section 5; page not provided) says the paper provides evidence that new fertility norms spread across cultural barriers in Europe, and the Introduction (p. 1) describes their spread from culturally closer to more distant societies. (LLM, conf=0.93)

  cites Spolaore & Wacziarg 2022 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Bauernschuster & Rainer 2012 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Chabé-Ferret 2019 source

In the paper

“Channels include greater dissatisfaction with and more versatility in long-term partnerships (T ong et al. 2021) as well as negative impacts on health (Nie et al. 2017, Billari et al. 2018) that may translate into fertility decline.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Tong et al. 2021 source
• Partly supported

  Section 4.2 (p. 16) reports that more intensive Internet use is associated with slightly higher depression scores, primarily among respondents aged 16–19. This supports a possible negative mental-health association, but not a causal impact on health or a link to fertility decline. The partnership claim is cited to Tong et al., not to this paper. (LLM, conf=0.86)

  cites Nie et al. 2017 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Billari et al. 2018 source

In the paper

“Summers (2015) and Eggertsson et al. (2019) argue that the demographic developments in high-income countries over the past decades contributed to secular stagnation, which is how they interpret the sluggish recovery from the global economic and financial crisis of 2008-2009.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Summers 2015 source
• Partly supported

  In “Decline in Interest Rates since 1970” (page unavailable), the paper finds that falling fertility and mortality were major contributors to the decline in US interest rates. Its quantitative model treats the US economy in 2015 as experiencing secular stagnation, with output below its precrisis trend (“Secular Stagnation in a Quantitative Life-Cycle Model,” page unavailable). The analysis is calibrated to the United States, however, so it does not establish the same demographic contribution across high-income countries generally. (LLM, conf=0.86)

  cites Eggertsson et al. 2019 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“It should, however, be noted that there is large variation in the fertility transition across developing countries, as emphasized by Bongaarts & Hodgson (2022).”

What the sources say

• Supported

  Section 1.2, “Fertility Trends,” explicitly says there is variability among developing countries’ fertility transitions and a wide range in their onset, pace of decline, and stalls. It also states that the transition did not unfold similarly throughout the developing world. (LLM, conf=0.94)

  cites Bongaarts & Hodgson 2022 source

In the paper

“This finding aligns with evidence that robotization, as a proxy for the more general digitalization of employment contexts, is associated with lower fertility in European settings (Matysiak et al. 2023).”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  The Discussion (page not provided) reports a negative association between robot adoption and fertility in certain regions of the six European countries studied. But it also says these effects are offset by fertility increases in better-educated, developing regions. The paper uses robot adoption as a proxy for automation-driven labour-market change, not for digitalization generally. (LLM, conf=0.88)

  cites Matysiak et al. 2023 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“Many high-income countries continue to face considerable internal migration, especially from rural to urban areas, leading to a tendency of unbalanced spatial economic development (see, e.g., Rosenbaum-Feldbrügge et al. 2022).”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  Section 5.2 reports substantial internal migration and continued outmigration from rural East Germany, and the Conclusions discuss rural-to-urban migration within East Germany. These passages support Germany as an example, but the paper does not establish a pattern across many high-income countries or show that migration leads to unbalanced spatial economic development; section 5.1 instead discusses economic differences as a driver of migration. The indexed passages provide section labels but no page numbers. (LLM, conf=0.86)

  cites Rosenbaum-Feldbrügge et al. 2022 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“Their findings suggest that if the demographic dividends are strategically reinvested (e.g., in education, population health, R&D, etc.), strong positive knock-on effects on economic growth can be expected (Bloom et al. 2017), as observed in many East Asian countries (Bloom & Finlay 2009).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Bloom et al. 2017 source
• Supported

  Bloom & Finlay (2009) is cited for the observation about East Asia, not for the preceding prediction about strategic reinvestment, which cites Bloom et al. (2017). The Conclusion (p. 37) attributes a large part of East Asia’s economic success to demographic changes, including longer life expectancy and reduced youth dependency. (LLM, conf=0.90)

  cites Bloom & Finlay 2009 source

In the paper

“The model is capable of generating a negative effect of fertility on economic growth and, thus, seems to be more in line with cross-country data (see, e.g., Ahituv 2001, Herzer et al. 2012).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Ahituv 2001 source
• Partly supported

  Section 2.2 (page unavailable) reports cross-country evidence of a negative association between fertility and economic growth, and Section 4.1 reports a delayed negative effect of fertility on GDP per capita. This supports the claim that a negative effect is in line with some empirical evidence. The paper does not establish that the citing authors’ semi-endogenous model, with its particular education and fertility choices, generates that effect. (LLM, conf=0.84)

  cites Herzer et al. 2012 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“Curtis et al. (2015) employ structural modeling in partial equilibrium to show that the fertility decline in China explains about 50% of the increase in aggregate savings, a finding that must be corrected downward when taking into account general equilibrium feedbacks (Banerjee et al. 2014).”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  Section 3 (p. 7) describes a partial-equilibrium model, and the Conclusion (p. 14) says reduced family size is a primary driver of China's high household saving rate. But the cited paper does not quantify fertility decline as explaining about 50% of the increase; it also identifies the large working-age population as a driver. The general-equilibrium qualification is attributed to Banerjee et al. in the citing sentence, not to Curtis et al. (LLM, conf=0.85)

  cites Curtis et al. 2015 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• Supported

  The citation to Banerjee et al. is attached to the general-equilibrium correction, not to the preceding attribution of the 50% estimate to Curtis et al. In §5 Conclusion, Banerjee et al. state that, in their model, partial-equilibrium effects substantially overestimate general-equilibrium effects. Their §4.4 Quantitative Results likewise finds a smaller aggregate savings response after accounting for general-equilibrium feedbacks, while noting that the size of the difference depends on model parameters. (LLM, conf=0.90)

  cites Banerjee et al. 2014 source

In the paper

“Siskova et al. (2023) find that human capital investments only partially offset reductions in fertility, implying a decline in the aggregate human capital (or effective labor force) of many countries, an effect that is even more pronounced for countries facing population decline.”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  Split into 2 atoms — 1 confirmed, 1 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.

  cites Siskova et al. 2023 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“A version of such a model that distinguishes the time allocation between women and men in terms of time spent on childcare and time spent on formal labor generates plausible effects of earnings increases that are in line with the discussion in Section 2.1. If women spend more time on childcare and less time on formal labor supply than men (as has been the case historically and still is the case in”

What the sources say

• Supported

  In its discussion of the model (p. 1657), the paper says male health improvements raise income and fertility, whereas female health improvements raise the opportunity cost of childcare and reduce fertility. The Discussion and Conclusions (p. 1671) describes these as productivity- and earnings-enhancing improvements and qualifies the male result as applying when men do not spend substantial time on childcare. (LLM, conf=0.90)

  cites Bloom et al. 2020 source

In the paper

“In most of these countries, the total fertility rate is now below the level that implies a stable population in the long run.”

In the paper

“In the medium run, however, a positive effect of falling fertility on parental labor force participation occurs through the term (1 -ψ nt ). This has a growth effect on per capita GDP in the medium run, which translates into a positive effect of falling fertility on income in the long run.”

In the paper

“During industrialization and throughout the first part of the twentieth century, the Malthusian view was no longer borne out by the data, which instead presented a negative relationship between TFR and GDP,as is well documented by Doepke et al. (2023).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Doepke et al. 2023

In the paper

“when fertility falls, the ratio of dependents starts to shrink initially because of fewer children, opening a time window to reap the benefits of a demographic dividend”

In the paper

“Absent migration, a fertility rate below the replacement level implies a shrinking population and a shrinking workforce in the long run.”

In the paper

“families tend to invest more in the education of each child because more resources are available if they need to care for fewer children. This, in turn, implies higher productivity among these children when they enter the labor market.”

In the paper

“Lower fertility has already led to a slowdown of workforce growth and even implies a decline in the absolute size of the workforce in many highincome countries.”

In the paper

“labor force participation (particularly of women) tends to rise, which leads to an immediate increase of the labor force”

In the paper

“The majority of studies show that the life-cycle income effect tends to dominate, implying that deteriorating employment conditions lead to reductions in fertility.”

In the paper

“Medical improvements and generally better living conditions during the early parts of the twentieth century have curbed both child mortality and precautionary fertility.”

In the paper

“They find that global fertility decline is particularly well explained by the impact of policy change on social norms.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites de Silva & T enreyro 2020

In the paper

“an increase in female earnings compounds the income effect with a substitution effect in the sense that female earnings raise the opportunity cost of having children, and the latter effect may, indeed, dominate.”

In the paper

“In addition, as Mason & Lee (2006) argue, a second demographic dividend becomes available to the extent that individuals, or the state on their behalf, increase savings to finance old-age support when fewer children or workers, more generally, are available.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Mason & Lee 2006

In the paper

“Hence, fertility decline generates fiscal pressure that may lead to increases in taxes and social security contributions or to funding cuts on growth-promoting policies, with both channels compromising economic growth.”

In the paper

“Some economists have expressed concerns that a decline in population growth or even depopulation has an underappreciated negative effect on innovation.”

In the paper

“While some evidence points to a flattening or reversal of the (originally negative) correlation between GDP and fertility at the macro level (Doepke et al. 2023)-especially in contexts in which social change, policies, or a high income level allow for a reconciliation between female employment and childbearing-these developments do not universally translate into a reversal of declining fertility”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Doepke et al. 2023

In the paper

“While the decline in fertility associated with these processes of social and technological change enables a take-off toward sustained economic growth, complementarities across these processes may drive secular fertility decline as economic development proceeds.”

In the paper

“In addition, upward pressures on wages emerge, which, in turn, cause upward pressures on prices such that inflationary spirals may be induced by demographic change (see, e.g., Lindh & Malmberg 2000).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Lindh & Malmberg 2000 source

In the paper

“This boosts employment further as compared with a situation with a high fertility rate. This effect is particularly strong in the short and medium run, but the growth effect tends to level off over time, because it is a one-time shift.”

In the paper

“By pointing out the role of market size for research and development (R&D), Desmet & Parente (2010) hint at a channel through which a reduction in local demand may inhibit an economy's innovation efforts.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Desmet & Parente 2010 source

In the paper

“Generally, the concern is that higher fertility among the socioeconomically disadvantaged may exacerbate inequality (e.g., Daruich & Kozlowski 2020) and dilute average human capital (Vogl 2016).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Daruich & Kozlowski 2020 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Vogl 2016 source

In the paper

“The gradual aging and retirement of workers translate into a subsequent decline of the support ratio, implying that the boost to per capita GDP is not permanent.”

In the paper

“First, a fertility decline that is unaccompanied by increases in immigration or a decline in mortality leads to a reduction of population growth and-with a certain delay to allow for schooling and training-to a slowdown in the growth of the labor force.”

In the paper

“Thus, as Doepke et al. (2023) point out, an understanding of how the income-fertility nexus is emerging may be more conducive to understanding cross- and within-country fertility differences than to understanding the secular decline in fertility.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Doepke et al. 2023

In the paper

“These savings would either boost investment in the domestic capital stock or generate claims on foreign production, for example, in countries with higher fertility (Krueger & Ludwig 2007).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Krueger & Ludwig 2007 source

In the paper

“Seltzer (2019b) finds that US fertility has not recovered from the bust during the Great Recession and attributes this empirically to continued structural change to the economy.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Seltzer 2019b

In the paper

“When fertility rates fall, the immediate effect is that the ratio of young dependent individuals to the working-age population starts to decrease. This opens the window for a demographic dividend (Bloom & Williamson 1998, Bloom et al. 2003), whereby, for a certain duration, the support ratio increases, which allows for an increase in per capita GDP .”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Bloom & Williamson 1998 source
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Bloom et al. 2003

In the paper

“Other channels that tend to promote the transition to low-fertility settings are reductions in child mortality, greater female labor market opportunities, improvements in women's education and health, and changes in social norms toward birth control and female empowerment.”

In the paper

“This has the potential to induce problems in the production of goods, supply chain disruptions, and even shortages of goods, as many countries experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic and in its immediate aftermath.”

In the paper

“This, in turn, implies deflationary tendencies; a reduction in investment by firms; and, consequently, downward pressure on the equilibrium interest rate.”

In the paper

“During this transition, the quantity-quality trade-off plays a crucial role because with technological progress, parental investment in the education of children becomes ever more desirable as fertility falls.”

In the paper

“As the number of working-age individuals decreases, so does the number of scientists in the long run (in the short run, a larger share of the population could become scientists and therefore compensate for the overall population decline). The reduction in the number of scientists, in turn, has negative effects on innovation and, thus, innovation-driven long-run economic growth in many prominent”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Romer 1990 source
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Jones 1995, 2022
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Aksoy et al. 2019 source

In the paper

“In addition, Liang et al. (2018) show that an increase in the median age of the population decreases new business formation and that older societies tend to exhibit a smaller fraction of entrepreneurs at every age.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Liang et al. 2018

In the paper

“This notwithstanding, a more permanent dividend can be reaped if the additional resources that become available during the demographic window of opportunity are invested in growth-promoting activities.”

In the paper

“While these findings generally support the notion that the savings response to fertility decline should at least partially offset the reduction in labor supply, Sánchez-Romero et al. (2013) show that this also depends on the policy context.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Sánchez-Romero et al. 2013 source

In the paper

“Jones (2022) goes one step further and shows that the consequences of entrenched below-replacement fertility are long-run depopulation and economic stagnation.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Jones 2022

In the paper

“In addition, a better-educated workforce is more productive, which would increase output and income, and more versatile, which would be helpful in finding new jobs after crises or after older jobs have been made obsolete by technological change (see Prettner & Bloom 2020, chapter 7).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Prettner & Bloom 2020

In the paper

“An unhealthy population may just not be capable of postponing retirement.”

In the paper

“Better-educated children are more productive when they enter the labor market, which has a positive effect on economic growth.”

In the paper

“while immigration can mitigate some of the demographic effects of low fertility”

In the paper

“As discussed in Section 2.4, access to capital markets for old-age savings may depress fertility.”

In the paper

“Studying the impacts of the baby boom and baby bust in Spain, accounting for the concomitant expansion of the public pensions system, and allowing for bequests, they find that the boom-bust sequence may well have depleted capital, both because of the negative saving incentive of public pensions for the boom cohort and because of the subsequent reliance of the bust cohort on generous bequests.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Sánchez-Romero et al. 2013 source

In the paper

“Kotschy & Sunde (2018) identify strong cross-country heterogeneity in the extent to which educational expansion compensates for the decline in the working-age population and find that for many countries, population aging will have negative consequences in the foreseeable future.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Kotschy & Sunde 2018 source

In the paper

“However, in general, it is not the sheer number of people that matters for knowledge creation but rather the presence of well-educated scientists who often have decades of training in the fields in which they work. Thus, the human capital of scientists is what should feature in the knowledge production function as the main determinant of technological progress and economic growth.”

In the paper

“In Jones's (1995) work, long-run economic growth is determined by technological progress that is generated in a knowledge production sector.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Jones 1995 source

In the paper

“Similarly, Cavallo et al. (2018) find in a comparative analysis that the correlation between demographic factors and domestic savings holds in Southeast Asia but not in Latin America.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cavallo et al. 2018 source

In the paper

“Moreover, the described behavioral effect is reinforced by an accounting effect in the education sector. A shrinking cohort of children means that a given government education budget is distributed among fewer pupils. This raises the resource intensity of schooling for each child and has the potential to raise economic growth (Prettner 2014).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Prettner 2014 source

In the paper

“In this context, it is important to note that if fertility rates rise after such policies are enacted, the number of dependents as compared with the working-age population will initially increase. This would lead to a reverse demographic dividend in the short to medium run, and the positive effects of increasing fertility on workforce and economic growth will only start to materialize after”

In the paper

“investments in education and investments in science and technology would be complementary in raising the productivity of workers.”

In the paper

“The steady decrease in fertility rates across high-income countries in recent decades has led to population aging and, in some countries, even to population decline and a shrinking workforce.”

In the paper

“Combining migration, family, and education policies could reduce the extent of population decline.”

In the paper

“Policies aimed at achieving a more desirable balance between family and work responsibilities could help to increase fertility and raise labor force participation.”