IF YOU HAVE a young population, the future is yours," Turkey's current President (and former Prime Minister) Recep Erdogan said about the challenge of population aging in Turkey. "At the moment, thank God, 60 per cent of our population is under 30. But when we look at the increase, if we continue like this, alarm bells are ringing for 2037-40." 1 Erdogan's fear of an increase in the proportion of elderly people in Turkey is mainly driven by fertility rates that have been rapidly decreasing over the last several decades. Turkish women still have more than two children on average, but trends suggest an eventual decline below replacement level. At the same time, female education and employment have been increasing over the past 15 years. Even though female employment rates are still relatively low in Turkey in comparison to other European countries, they are rising especially for young cohorts of better-educated women, who also tend to have lower fertility.This article examines the determinants of Turkey's fertility decline using census and survey data. We show that the transition from a second to a third child is crucial for the future of fertility levels in Turkey. In a context of increasing education and employment opportunities for women, our results suggest that the decline in fertility reflects an important conflict between work-life balance in Turkey, which affects in particular mothers in formal employment. When women who have two children are employed, their contribution to household income is crucial. In the absence of possibilities to combine employment and family life, mothers who are active in formal jobs are thus most likely to decide against having a third child.Enabling women to work while raising children would allow families to generate the financial means that are needed for larger family size. However, the current policy setting in Turkey is conducive to impeding P O P U L AT I O N A N D D E

This paper shows that differences in fertility across European countries mainly emerge due to fewer women having two children in low-fertility countries. It further suggests that childcare services are an important determinant for the transition to a second child to occur. The theoretical framework we propose suggests that (i) in countries where childcare coverage is low, there is a U-shaped relationship between a couple’s probability of having a second child and the woman’s potential wage, whereas (ii) in countries with easy access to childcare, this probability is positively related with the woman’s potential wage. Data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) confirm these implications when estimating a woman’s probability of having a second child as a function of education. This implies that middle-income women are the most affected ones by the lack of access to formal and subsidized childcare.

International audienceBACKGROUNDThe European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) are increasingly used in demographic analysis, due to their large country coverage, the availability of harmonized socioeconomic measures, and the possibility to merge partners. However, so far there exists no comprehensive analysis of the representativeness of the fertility behavior reported by EU-SILC.OBJECTIVEThis paper quantifies the quality of periodic fertility measures in EU-SILC.METHODSWe compare periodic fertility measures obtained with EU-SILC to unbiased measures from the Human Fertility Database (HFD) for several European countries, by applying a cross-sectional perspective.RESULTSWe show that EU-SILC measures of periodic fertility are biased downward, mainly due to attrition, while births of order one for ages 20‒29 are particularly underreported. However, we find no evidence of socioeconomic differentials in attrition.CONCLUSIONSOur results suggest that for the majority of European countries, EU-SILC can be used for the analysis of childbearing behavior when respecting the measures of precaution mentioned in this article

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This paper explores, theoretically and empirically, the role of the declining gender gap in education in the demographic transition and the emergence of modern economic growth. Specically, the paper develops a model in the tradition of the unied growth theory that captures and interconnects the key empirical features of the demographic transition, the decline in gender gap in education, and the transition to sustained growth across less-developed economies. The mechanism on which the model relies comprises several interplaying components. First, technological progress reduces housework time through the creation and diusion of labor-saving home appliances, which frees women's time for childrearing, resulting in an initial increase in fertility, as well as in labor-force participation. Second, due to the possibly higher female labor-force participation as housework time decreases, households invest relatively more in their daughters' education, given its higher return following the initial imbalance. This improves gender equality in education and increases the opportunity cost of childrearing, which leads to a subsequent decrease in fertility. Third and nally, the decrease in the education gender gap through higher investment in daughters' education increases average human capital, thus accelerating technological progress in turn. This reinforcing loop results in the transition to a new fertility regime and accelerated economic growth. We provide the empirical conrmation of the model's predictions using data from developing countries in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.