Behind the surprising stability of Romanian fertility.

Surprisingly enough though it started from relatively different levels at the end of the 1980s the fertility trends were similar in different political economical and social contexts in the 1990s resulting in a homogeneous level with total fertility rates almost identical and stable after the year 2000 of 1.2 to 1.3 births/woman. The fertility decrease in the 1990s in the countries undergoing economic and social transition was not determined and maintained by immediate economic factors. The causes were different mainly non-economic emerging from the deep changes those post-communist societies went through and which influenced the attitude of the young couple regarding marriage family and the place of children in the hierarchy of priorities and decisions. Romanias case cannot be analyzed apart from this general picture. There is although one important particularity: Before 1990 Romania had a forced and brutal pronatalist policy (with severe restrictions upon access to contraception and abortion) and the total fertility rate was slightly higher than in the other European communist countries (2.2 - 2.3 children/woman). It was obvious that the level of fertility in Romania was artificially maintained at this level and we expected the decrease in the 1990s to be higher once the restrictive regulations on abortion and contraception were abolished at the end of 1989. Moreover the economic crisis and the dramatic reduction of the living standards should have amplified the fertility decline to a higher level compared with the other countries where the deterioration of the living standards was only moderate and temporary (Czech Republic Slovakia Poland and Hungary). (excerpt)