Branislav Šprocha, INFOSTAT – Demographic Research Centre, Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences of the Slovak Academy of Science, Slovak Republic

Type of article: scientific article
Pages: 22 – 36

Abstract

Fertility in Slovakia has a long-term downward trend. This is confirmed not only by cross-sectional data, but we also clearly identify the fertility reduction of in a cohort view. An irreplaceable place for a deeper understanding of these changes is played by data obtained from Population and Housing Census. The question of the number of (live-) births has been their an integral part of them since 1930. In addition to completed cohort fertility presenting the average realized fertility of women born in the same year, they also allow a deeper insight into the parity structure, the level and development of the parity progression ratios, or the concentration of reproduction and thus the variability of the reproduction. The main goal of this article was a deeper analysis of cohort fertility in Slovakia in groups of women born in the years 1940 – 1980, using the results of the most recent 2021 Population and Housing Census. The obtained data confirmed the continued decline in fertility, when cohorts of women from the second half of the 1960s were the last with an average of more than 2 children per woman. For women born in the 1970s, completed cohort fertility dropped significantly below the threshold of 2 children. This is conditioned by the reduction of This is conditioned by the reduction of the probabilities of the birth of the first and the second child, which is subsequently reflected in the increase in childlessness and one-child families, with a simultaneous decrease in the share of the two-child family model. In the youngest generations, there is also an increase in the variability of reproduction and the decrease in family size and the number of siblings in them.