Is fertility converging across the member states of the European Union?

Abstract

The article shows the importance of taking into account additional constraints of consistency when preparing the projections assumptions for a set of countries. In the case of fertility, described in this article, this may be expressed in the form of convergence between countries with which future national demographic behavior could be required — in the assumptions setting — to comply. This “international” constraint may have both theoretical and empirical grounds.

The paper presents an analysis of the various concepts of convergence proposed in the literature together with the related indicators. The author's method of analysis and a new simple indicator of convergence are defined, and are used to assess the presence of convergence in the whole set of 27 countries currently belonging to the European Union. The author analyzes the possible impact of accession to the European Union on convergence in fertility for some of the EU enlargements that have occurred in the past. Finally, the implications for making assumptions in the projections exercises are discussed.