Lutz Abstract

"The Future of Fertility"

This paper will try to systematically address three fundamentally different questions which are often confounded: (1) What do we know about the likely future trends in fertility as it would evolve without interventions? What arguments are there that would suggest either a spontaneous recovery of fertility or further declines? (2) What is the desirable or optimal level of fertility for Europe and what are the criteria for such an optimum? I will discuss criteria related to the consequences of population ageing, to global environmental change and to national/ethnic identity. (3) If the assumed optimal level of fertility is likely to be different from the expected one, what means do governments have to influence the level of fertility in ways that are both effective and socially acceptable? In trying to answer these questions the focus will be on Europe (and the West) in a global perspective considering the changing weight of  Europe’s population in the world population as well as differential contributions to major global trends such as technological development and global climate change. The paper will also go beyond the traditional demographic dimensions of age and sex and explicitly consider educational attainment and other dimensions such as religion.