France: High and stable fertility
By L. Toulemon, A. Pailhé, C. Rossier. 2008
161 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The current total fertility rate in France is around 1.9 children per woman. This is a relatively high level by current European standards and makes France an outlier, despite the fact that its other demographic trends, especially conjugal behaviour, and social and economic trends are not very different from other Western European countries. France can serve as a counterfactual test case for some of the hypotheses advanced to explain the current low level of fertility in most European countries (delay in fertility, decline in marriage, increased birth control, greater economic uncertainty). France’s fertility level can be partly explained by its active family policy introduced after the Second World War, and adapted in the 1980s to accommodate women’s entry into the labour force. This policy is the result of a battle, fuelled by pro-natalism, between the conservative supporters of family values and the promoters of state-supported individual equality. French family policy thus encompasses a wide range of measures based on varying ideological backgrounds, and it is difficult to classify in comparison to the more precisely focused family policies of other European welfare states. The active family policy seems to have created especially positive attitudes towards two- or three child families in France.
Subfields: Demography, General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/88bee54154cd2062e9ed381f64f39ff4354cf22d
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In Demography
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Citations in the corpus
- Future fertility in low fertility countries (2014, background): “Pro-natalist in nature, this active set of policies seems to have created especially positive attitudes towards two- or three-child families in France (Toulemon et al. 2008).”
- The Influence of Employment Uncertainty on Childbearing in France: A Tempo or Quantum Effect? (2012, unknown): “14 children on average (Toulemon et al. 2008).”
- Overview Chapter 4: Changing family and partnership behaviour: Common trends and persistent diversity across Europe (2008, background): “As noted in the France chapter, family has become “less of a place to reproduce generational and gender hierarchies, and more of a special space where individuals forge their identity” (Toulemon et al. 2008:524).”