Advancing Development and Reversing Fertility Trends: The Roles of Age, Gender Equality, and Components of Development

Mikko Myrskylä, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Our recent paper “Advances in Development Reverse Fertility Declines” argued that a fundamental change in the fertility-development relationship has occurred, so that while development continues to promote fertility declines at low and medium levels of development, at advanced development levels further development can reverse the declining trend in fertility, resulting in a J-shaped development–fertility relationship. This follow-up expands and updates our analyses to more recent data. In particular, we analyze which components of development are driving the reversal; consider the age pattern of the reversal; study how gender equality mediates the reversal; and analyze how cohort fertility is related to development. Our results provide additional support that increases in development are an important driving factor of these fertility reversals in developed countries.