The Third Demographic Transition? The Technological-Relational Revolution and the Fertility Declines of the 21st Century

Natalie Nitsche , Australian National University
Edith Gray, Australian National University
Anna Reimondos, Australian National University

The steep post-2008 fertility declines remain poorly understood. We offer a novel perspective by contextualizing them with the expansion of the internet. We suggest that its revolutionary changes in human relating deeply impacted family formation. Drawing on psychological need theory, we theorize that pathways to fulfill the human need to relate have been altered, triggering the fertility declines. We use fixed-effect regression to estimate the association between the internet expansion and the TFR between 2003 and 2023 across 32 European countries. Indeed, results show a curvilinear association between the proportion of people using the internet daily and the TFR. Increases of up to 55% of people using the internet daily are associated with a slight increase in TFR from 1.61 to 1.63. Further increases, however, predict a steep linear TFR decline. Future versions of this study will test additional indicators through which daily internet usage and TFR may be linked.

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 Presented in Session 105. Fertility and Digital Technologies