Between Two Worlds: Fertility Dynamics of a Transitional Cohort of Women Born in Hungary between 1960 and 1969: a Decompositional Analysis

Laura Szabo , Institute for Quantitative Population and Economic Research – Hungarian Demographic Research Institute (HDRI)
Zsuzsanna Makay, Hungarian Demographic Research Institute

The collapse of state socialism and Hungary's transition to a market economy in 1989 altered societal structures, including fertility and education. This study examines if changes in the completed cohort fertility (CFR) of Hungarian women born 1920–82 were due to changes in their education or education-specific fertility. Using Kitagawa's method, we decompose the change in CFR into a structural effect (change in educational composition) and a direct effect (education-specific parity). We then compare birth cohorts of women whose main childbearing years fell within the pre-transition, transition and post-transition periods of the socialist regime change. The structural effect on CFR change was more substantial for the pre-transition, while the direct effect was more pronounced for the post-transition group, with the two effects being equal in the transition group. Women with primary education were the main drivers of CFR decrease in all periods, with the highest effect in the pre-transition and the lowest effect in the post-transition group. Conversely, tertiary education had a positive effect on all cohorts, but the effect was lowest in the pre-transition, and highest in the post-transition group. The transition group behaved similarly to the pre-transition group in this respect. While the influence of childlessness and parity 1 on change in CFR is negligible in the transition group compared to the other two groups, a different effect to that seen in the pre-transition group of parities 2 and 3+ clearly emerges in the transition cohort: parity 2 decreases, parity 3+ increases the overall CFR, respectively.

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 Presented in Session P3. Families, Fertility, and the Life Course 3