Crisis or adaptation – reconsidered: a comparison of East and West German fertility patterns in the first six years after the ‘Wende’

  • Like other Eastern Europeancountries, East Germany experienced a rapiddecline in period fertility rates after thefall of communism. This decline has beendiscussed along the lines of a ‘crisis’ andan ‘adaptation’ to western demographic patterns. The aim of this paper istwofold. Firstly, we discuss the factors whichfoster and hamper a convergence of fertilitybehaviour in East and West Germany. Secondly,we use data from the German micro-census toanalyse the fertility patterns of the cohortsborn 1961–1970. The main result of ourempirical analysis is that East Germans whowere still childless at the time of unificationare quicker to have their first child in thesubsequent years than comparable West Germans. However, regarding second parity births, thepattern reverses. Here, East Germans display alower transition rate than their counterpartsin the West.

Download full text files

Export metadata

Additional Services

Share in Twitter Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Author(s):Michaela KreyenfeldORCiD
Parent Title (English):European Journal of Population
ISSN:0168-6577
Publisher:Kluwer Academic Publishers
Place of Publisher:Dordrecht
Publication year:2003
Publishing Institution:Hertie School
First Page:303
Last Page:329
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024992712815
Release Date:2015/05/13
Tag:East Germany; Fertility
Volume:19
Issue:3
Notes:
Also published as Working Paper at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research: http://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2002-032.pdf
Licence of document (German):Metadaten / metadata
Verstanden ✔
Diese Webseite verwendet technisch erforderliche Session-Cookies. Durch die weitere Nutzung der Webseite stimmen Sie diesem zu. Unsere Datenschutzerklärung finden Sie hier.