Population policies in socialist countries of Europe

Abstract The emergence, in the mid-sixties, of policies aimed at counteracting rapid fertility decline in some socialist countries of Europe is discussed in the paper. Following a summary of recent population trends and policies in nine European socialist countries, and brief comments on ideological and theoretical considerations, factors relevant to policy decision are discussed. Population policies aiming at encouraging fertility exist in five countries, viz. German Demographic Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Recent developments appear to include attempts to stimulate third births with measures aiming to improve economic conditions of large families, the status of women, education and restriction of induced abortion.     

Europe's second demographic transition

By 1985, fertility rates in Europe were below the replacement level of 2.1 births/woman in all but Albania, Ireland, Malta, Poland, and Turkey, following a steady decline from a 1965 postwar peak well above 2.5 in Northern, Western, and Southern Europe and an erratic trend from a lower level in Eastern Europe. Natural decrease (fewer births than deaths) had begun already in Austria, Denmark, Hungary, and the Federal Republic of Germany and can be expected shortly in many other countries. According to current UN medium projections, Europe's population (minus the USSR) will grow only 6% between 1985 and 2025, from 492 to 524 million and 18.4% of the population in 2025 will be 65 and over. The decline to low fertility in the 1930s during Europe's 1st demographic transition was propelled by a concern for family and offspring. Behind the 2nd transition is a dramatic shift in norms toward progressiveness and individualism, which is moving Europeans away from marriage and parenthood. Cohabitation and out-of-wedlock fertility are increasingly acceptable; having a child is more and more a deliberate choice made to achieve greater self-fulfillment. Many Europeans view population decline and aging as threats to national influence and the welfare state. However, governments outside Eastern Europe, except for France, have hesitated to try politically risky and costly economic pronatalist incentives. As used in Eastern Europe, coupled with some restrictions on legal abortion, such incentives have not managed to boost fertility back up to replacement level. Immigration as a solution is unfeasible. All countries of immigration have now imposed strict controls, tried to stimulate return migration of guestworkers recruited during labor shortages of the 1960s and early 1970s, and now aim at rapid integration of minorities. Only measures compatible with the shift to individualism might slow or reverse the fertility decline, but a rebound to replacement level seems unlikely and long-term population decline appears inevitable for most of Europe.     

After the demographic transition: policy responses to low fertility in four Asian countries

In the low fertility countries of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand, policy-makers are concerned about the consequences of low growth. In South Korea, a family planning (FP) program was instituted in the early 1960s, and fertility declined to 1.6 by 1987. Rural fertility is still higher at 1.96, and abortion rates are high. 32.2% of fertility reduction is accomplished through abortion. South Korean population will not stabilize until 2021, at 50.6 million people. The elderly are expected to increase and strain housing, energy, and land resources. Government support for FP is being reduced, while private sector services are being enhanced. Government sterilization programs have been reduced significantly, and revisions in the Medical Insurance Law will cover part of contraceptive cost. Integrated services are being established. Many argue for an emphasis on birth spacing, child and family development, sex education, and care of the elderly. In Taiwan, replacement level fertility was reached in 1983. Policy in 1992 recommended increasing fertility from 1.6 to 2.1. The aim was to stabilize population without pronatalist interventions. Regardless of policy decisions, population growth will continue over the next 40 years, and the extent of aging will increase. In Singapore since the 1960s, the national government focused on encouraging small families through fertility incentives, mass media campaigns, and easy access to FP services. Fertility declined to 1.4 in 1988. Since 1983, government has established a variety of pronatalist incentives. In 1989, fertility increased to 1.8. The pronatalist shift is viewed as not likely to succeed in dealing with the concern for an adequate work force to support the elderly and economic development. In Thailand, fertility declined the fastest to 2.4 in 1993. The key factors were rapid economic and social development, a supportive cultural setting, strong demand for fertility control, and a successful FP program. The goal is to reduce fertility to 1.2 by 1996. Replacement level may be reached in 2000 or 2005. Future trends are not clear.     

The Apparent Failure of Russia's Pronatalist Family Policies

Russia has a history of pronatalist policies dating back to the 1930s. Two sets of pronatalist measures were implemented during the past 40 years. The one designed in the early 1980s proved to be a clear failure. Instead of raising fertility, completed cohort fertility declined from 1.8 births per woman for the 1960 birth cohort to 1.6 for the 1968 cohort. The government of President Putin became concerned with the dire demographic conditions of high mortality and low fertility in Russia in the 1990s and early 2000s. A comprehensive set of pronatalist measures came into effect in January 2007. The period total fertility rate increased from 1.3 births per woman in 2006 to 1.6 in 2011, which the authorities view as an unqualified success. An unbiased demographic evaluation as well as analyses of Russian experts reveals that apparently the measures mainly caused a lowering of the age at birth and shortening of birth intervals. It appears that any real fertility increase is questionable, i.e. cohort fertility is not likely to increase appreciably. The recent pronatalist measures are likely to turn out to be a failure.     

Modelling period fertility: Schooling and intervals following a birth in Eastern Africa

We describe a regression-based approach to the modelling of age-, order-, and duration-specific period fertility, using retrospective survey data. The approach produces results that are free of selection biases and can be used to study differential fertility. It is applied to Demographic and Health Survey data for Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe to investigate differential trends in fertility by education. Parity progression fell and the intervals following each birth lengthened between the 1970s and 2000s in all four countries. Fertility fell most among women with secondary education. In contrast to other world regions, postponement of successive births for extended periods accounted for much of the initial drop in fertility in these African countries. However, family size limitation by women with secondary education in Ethiopia and Kenya and longer birth spacing in Zimbabwe also played significant roles. Thus, birth control is being adopted in Eastern Africa in response to diverse changes in fertility preferences.     

The objectives of government policies on fertility control in Eastern Europe

Although demographers from the communist countries continue to maintain that overpopulation in the Malthusian sense Is possible only under capitalism, some East European demographers now concede that a form of overpopulation may, at times and under certain conditions, exist In a communist society. In this connection the ideological framework for an optimum population policy under communism has been developed, and demographers have been given the task of determining what the optimum population is and how it is to be attained. There has been considerable ferment on the Issue of fertility control in both the literature and action programmes of Poland, Chechoslovakia, and Hungary. The latter two countries have conducted surveys on family planning, including the use and effectiveness of contraceptives, and have established demographic journals.

All the communist countries of Eastern Europe except Albania and East Germany have relaxed laws restricting abortions and conducted campaigns for the spread of contraceptives. At the same time family allowances have been continued. These paradoxically divergent policies can be rationalized as attempts to sustain existing families while providing the basis for regulating future fertility to achieve an optimum population in relation to the resources of the respective countries.     

High Sex Ratios at Birth in the Caucasus: Modern Technology to Satisfy Old Desires

During the 1990s, the sex ratio at birth increased considerably and simultaneously in the three independent Caucasian countries, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. At the end of the first decade of the twenty‐first century, levels remain abnormally high in Armenia and Azerbaijan (above 114 male births per 100 female births) and show erratic trends in Georgia. Analyzing data from demographic surveys carried out around 2005, we confirm the persistence of high sex ratios in these three countries and document significant differences in fertility intentions and behavior according to the sex of the previous child or children that constitute evidence of the practice of sex‐selective abortion. These countries combine societal features and medical systems that make this phenomenon possible: son preference in a context of low fertility and the possibility of prenatal sex selection given easy access to ultrasound screening and induced abortion. Why high sex ratios are observed only in these three countries of the sub‐region remains, however, an open question.     

Fertility transition in Communist Albania, 1950-90

In 1945, at the end of the Second World War, Albania had the highest fertility in Europe with an average of more than six live births per woman. However when Albania emerged from behind the 'olive curtain' in 1990, fertility had fallen to three children per woman, despite a pro-natalist environment and in the virtual absence of contraception and abortion. Nevertheless, after five decades, Albania's position at the top of the European fertility league remains unchanged. This paper documents the fertility transition in Albania during the period 1950-90 and places the demographic results in the context of recent socioeconomic and cultural change.     

Mortality by sex,age, and cause of death,in European and highly developed extra-European countries in the years 1960-1984

"A comparative analysis of mortality, in which standardized death rates...were used, was conducted for 24 European and 5...[other] developed countries. The analysis shows that in spite of medical progress in fighting high mortality stemming from primary sources (diseases of [the] circulatory system and malignant neoplasms), its very high level is still registered in many Middle and Eastern European countries (especially in Hungary, in former Czechoslovakia and Poland). A high increase of premature mortality of men aged 45-64 is also observed."     

The Soviet Union: population trends and dilemmas

Focus in this discussion of population trends and dilemmas in the Soviet Union is on demographic problems, data limitations, early population growth, geography and resources, the 15 republics of the Soviet Union and nationalities, agriculture and the economy, population growth over the 1950-1980 period (national trend, regional differences); age and sex composition of the population, fertility trends, nationality differentials in fertility, the reasons for fertility differentials (child care, divorce, abortion and contraception, illegitimacy), labor shortages and military personnel, mortality (mortality trends, life expectancy), reasons for mortality increases, urbanization and emigration, and future population prospects and projections. For mid-1982 the population of the Soviet Union was estimated at 270 million. The country's current rate of natural increase (births minus deaths) is about 0.8% a year, higher than current rates of natural increase in the U.S. (0.7%) and in developed countries as a whole (0.6%). Net immigration plays no part in Soviet population growth, but emigration was noticeable in some years during the 1970s, while remaining insignificant relative to total population size. National population growth has dropped by more than half in the last 2 decades, from 1.8% a year in the 1950s to 0.8% in 1980-1981, due mostly to declining fertility. The national fertility decline masks sharp differences among the 15 republics and even more so among the some 125 nationalities. In 1980, the Russian Republic had an estimated fertility rate of 1.9 births/woman, and the rate was just 2.0 in the other 2 Slavic republics, the Ukraine and Belorussia. In the Central Asian republics the rates ranged up to 5.8. Although the Russians will no doubt continue to be the dominant nationality, low fertility and a relatively higher death rate will reduce their share of the total population by less than half by the end of the century. Soviet leaders have launched a pronatalist policy which they hope will lead to an increase in fertility, at least among the dominant Slavic groups of the multinational country. More than 9 billion rubles (U.S. $12.2 billion) is to be spent over the next 5 years to implement measures aimed at increasing state aid to families with children, to be carried out step by step in different regions of the country. It is this writer's opinion that overall fertility is not likely to increase markedly despite the recent efforts of the central authorities, and the Russian share of the total population will probably continue to drop while that of Central Asian Muslim peoples increases.     

Pronatalist population policies in some Western European countries

This article is restricted to a comparison of four Western European countries: France, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. As the crude birthrates and total period fertility rates of these countries indicate, a stabilization of fertility has set in in France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Official government attitudes towards these developments differ greatly, with France having clear pronatalist policy measures, the German Federal Government having only family policy measures, but some member states going further with a policy of family foundation loans. In the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, no official population policy exists, apart from a certain reluctance to accept more foreign immigrants. It must be concluded that the only common characteristic of population policies in the four countries is that they try to enable women to work and care for a family at the same time. The future effect of pronatalist population policy measures is still highly in doubt.This article was originally presented as a paper to the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, Washington DC, March 28, 1981.     

Socio-Economic Disparities in the Development of the Romania’s Border Areas

The Romanian border areas include 898 Local Administrative Units 2 (LAU2), of which 88 are urban and 810 rural. Romania has borderline with the following countries: Bulgaria, Republic of Moldova, Serbia, Ukraine, Hungary, of which 63.5 % is Non-European Union boundary. According to the population structure, 51.6 % of the total population is urban and the rest of 48.4 % is rural. In order to assess the socio-economic territorial disparities in the development of the urban space of Romanian border areas, several research stages were carried out: selecting 22 relevant statistical indicators, analyzing territorial disparities, standardizing the absolute values of the indicators, grouping the elementary indicators by 7 multiple indicator clusters (secondary indexes) in order to reflect the main socio-economic development aspects: (1) housing, (2) public utilities infrastructure and green areas, (3) health, (4) labour market, (5) demography, (6) education and (7) local economy. Finally, the authors were able to compute secondary indexes and the Index of Socio-Economic Development as Hull Score with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 14, revealing the levels of socio-economic development (high, average and low). Generally, the outcomes of the current study are in line with Romania’s complex socio-economic disparities, rooted in the historic background of the country. Spatially, the economic development follows a West–East direction, the less developed areas being concentrated in the Eastern and Southern part of the country.     

Citizenship Norms in Eastern Europe

Research on Eastern Europe stresses the weakness of its civil society and the lack of political and social involvement, neglecting the question: What do people themselves think it means to be a good citizen? This study looks at citizens’ definitions of good citizenship in Poland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, using 2002 European Social Survey data. We investigate mean levels of civic mindedness in these countries and perform regression analyses to investigate whether factors traditionally associated with civic and political participation are also correlated with citizenship norms across Eastern Europe. We show that mean levels of civic mindedness differ significantly across the four Eastern European countries. We find some support for theories on civic and political participation when explaining norms of citizenship, but also demonstrate that individual-level characteristics are differently related to citizenship norms across the countries of our study. Hence, our findings show that Eastern Europe is not a monolithic and homogeneous bloc, underscoring the importance of taking the specificities of countries into account.     

Outsourcing of Housework and the Transition to a Second Birth in Germany

The struggle that women face in reconciling their work and family roles is one of the main explanations proposed for the rapid decline in fertility rates in some developed countries. This study examines the role of the outsourcing of housework in reducing such role incompatibility and in increasing fertility among women in Germany—a country with below-replacement fertility rates, which enacted a series of large-scale schemes from the beginning of the 1990s that give incentives to households to outsource housework. Based on Goode’s role strain theory and by using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, this study analyzed whether women who outsourced housework after the birth of their first child had a higher probability of having a second child. A survival analysis of 3990 person years demonstrates that, controlling for observables, the outsourcing of domestic labor is positively associated with a higher probability of a subsequent second birth in German women.     

The Effect of State Transfers on Poverty in Post-Socialist Eastern Europe

During the market transition in Eastern Europe, social support mechanisms shifted from employment-based measures to means-tested ones. This restructuring, along with an overall decrease in social support and economic productivity and an increase in unemployment, meant that these payments were often inadequate to address the large rise in poverty during this period of time. Little research, however, considers whether individual-level payments were effective in reducing poverty. This paper considers the efficacy of these individual-level payments in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania, using two-wave panel data. It shows that state transfers to individuals reduced their poverty in all these countries. Thus, while the level of payments may have been inadequate to eliminate the adverse effects of the market transition, the payments themselves were beneficial to individuals and reduced their poverty.     

Rising Economic Prosperity and Social Quality the Case of New Member States of the European Union

This paper considers whether rising economic prosperity in the New Member States of the European Union since joining the EU is also reflected in better a quality of life and what constitutes a better quality of society for the citizens of these countries. The paper contributes to the debate about the relationship between economic conditions and subjective well-being by showing that the factors that contribute to the latter have not only changed with economic growth but that subjective life satisfaction has also improved. Here we consider how this relationship can be explained by using the Social Quality model to measure the quality of society. We look specifically at the New Member States of the European Union (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria) using the European Quality of Life Surveys for 2003 and 2007. This covers a period during which the economic conditions of these societies improved and they modernised. The social quality model explains a great deal of the variance in life satisfaction and helps us to show that as well as economic factors, other aspects of the quality of society, such as social integration and empowerment, are also important. We argue that economic and social factors have to be understood as interacting with other aspects of society if we seek to understand the quality of society.     

Causes of fertility decline in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union

Abstract This is the first part of a wider study which attempts to throw iight on the demographic, economic and social factors that have led to dramatic declines in fertility levels in most socialist countries of Eastern Europe during the last fifteen years or so. The present part is concerned with the purely demographic influences, that is mainly with the impact of changes in the age and sex structure of the populations under study, and in nuptiality. The statistical evidence adduced indicates that the observed downward trends in the annual number of births and in crude birth rates are a reflection of genuine changes in attitudes towards family size.     

Fertility Decline in Czechoslovakia During the Last Two Centuries

The decline of fertility in Czechoslovakia on the territory of the Czech Socialist Republic began with a rise in the age at marriage; the decline of marital fertility began only after 1860. On the territory of the Slovak Socialist Republic marital fertility began to decline after 1900 without previous significant changes in the age at marriage. The differences between the demographic behaviour in the two parts of Czechoslovakia have persisted, although they are now gradually disappearing. There are other significant regional differences in the fertility decline caused by the overall process of economic and social development. The end of the demographic transition in the Czech Socialist Republic came during the 1930's and in the Slovak Socialist Republic during the 1960's.     

Attitudes toward family size in some East European countries

Summary The paper is a review of published materials on attitudes toward family size derived from nationwide family planning studies conducted in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and the USSR around 1970. Priority is given to the findings on expected family size, though other attitudinal variables such as the ideal number of children and/or the number planned at marriage are also discussed. The paper shows that the majority of women in all the countries surveyed tend to have a limited number of children. Although the trend is especially striking among better-educated and gainfully employed women, it is also spreading fast, particularly among the younger generations, through the whole urban and rural population. The average expected family size is generally close to, and for a sizeable group of women below, replacement level. The trend toward a small family size is only partially a reflection of real desires. Various factors, most of them apparently of an economic nature, prompt many women to have fewer children than they would wish. If the average expected fertility were equal to that considered as ideal or to that planned at marriage there would be no danger that births would fall below replacement level. In contrast to the situation in the countries as a whole, women in the Asian Republics of the USSR not only expect but also tend to regard as ideal a family with larger numbers of children.