ABSTRACT
Over the last decade the European population has experienced rates of reproduction that are at historically unprecedented low levels. In the 25-member European Union (EU), the current generation of adults is being replaced by one that is less than two-thirds its size. As demonstrated in the introduction to the present volume, this low level of fertility will have significant and lasting effects on Europe’s age structure and population size. The last two chapters have described in some detail how fertility rates have been changing over the past decades in different parts of Europe and shown that the trends are far from uniform across the continent. They have also discussed the social and economic factors that have been associated with these trends and the role of public policies in influencing them.
