In the 2010s, fertility declined in many parts of Europe, particularly in the Nordic countries. The decline was most striking in Finland, where the total fertility rate (TFR) – i.e. an estimate of the number of children a group of women would ultimately have through their lifetime based on a sum of age-specific fertility rates in one calendar year – fell from 1.87 in 2010 to an all-time low of 1.35 in 2019. The postponement or foregoing of first births has driven the decline, and it is somewhat stronger among the lower educated. It remains unclear whether this decline is due to changing union dynamics, in particular decreased union formation, fewer births being born in unions or a combination of both.
In a new study, Julia Hellstrand (University of Helsinki), Jessica Nisén (University of Turku) and Mikko Myrskylä (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research) investigated changes in the union and first birth dynamics from 2000 through 2018 in Finland. The study was based on full-coverage individual-level Finnish population register data and an incidence-based multistate model. The findings were published in the European Journal of Population.
The researchers observed lower fertility in co-residential unions after 2010, a long-term decline in marriage rates and increased dissolution rates among cohabiting couples. Using counterfactual simulations, they showed that changing union dynamics provide a partial explanation, but postponing or foregoing fertility within unions represents the primary reason for the first-birth decline. Overall, almost three-quarters of the total decline was explained by a decline in first births among co-residing couples. Decreasing marriage (19%) and cohabitation rates (2–4%), as well as higher union dissolution rates (6%), explained a smaller share of the first birth decline. Men and women featured largely similar patterns, and, across educational groups, the decreasing first birth transitions in co-residing unions explained most of the decline.
First children in contemporary Finland have increasingly been born to non-married cohabiting couples, whereby marriage has increasingly followed childbearing. In the current trend, however, the declining marriage rates since 2010 are not followed by increasing nonmarital births. Instead, the tendency to remain cohabiting without transitioning to either marriage or the first birth has increased, accompanied by a slight increase in the risk of separation among younger cohabiting couples.
A declining trend towards entering a cohabiting union was notable primarily among the lower educated. The sharper decline in cohabitation rates in the lower social strata may imply that these groups are experiencing increasingly greater difficulties in the relationship market. Overall, cohabitation rates began declining in younger age groups after 2015, a departure from the previous long-term stable trend.
While changing union dynamics provide a partial explanation, postponing or foregoing first-birth fertility within unions represents the primary reason for the fertility decline. The findings may have implications beyond Finland given that fertility declines in the 2010s were witnessed across many countries. Why couples postpone or forego childbearing might be the key to understanding recent fertility declines, and it remains important to keep closely monitoring fertility patterns across social strata.
The research was supported by the Strategic Research Council of the Academy of Finland, decision numbers 345130 and 345131 (Family Formation in Flux – Causes, Consequences, and Possible Futures).