Recession, Local Fertility, and Urban Sustainability: Results of a Quasi-Experiment in Greece, 1991–2018

Abstract

Fertility is a spatially non-stationary property of regional demographic systems. Despite the wealth of quantitative (micro–macro) information delineating short-term population dynamics in advanced economies, the contribution of economic downturns to local fertility has still been under-investigated along urban–rural gradients, especially in low-fertility contexts. Recent studies have assumed suburban fertility rates as systematically higher than urban and rural fertility rates. This assumption (hereafter known as the “suburban fertility hypothesis”) has been grounded on stylized facts and spatial regularities in advanced economies that reflect a significant role of both macro (contextual) and micro (behavioral) factors that positively influence fertility in suburban locations. To test the suburban fertility hypothesis at the macro-scale, the present study compares gross fertility rates from seven regional units of the Athens metropolitan area between 1991 and 2018. A refined spatial analysis of gross fertility rates during an economic expansion (1999–2008) and recession (2009–2018) was carried out in 115 urban, suburban, and rural municipalities of the same area. Experiencing sequential waves of economic expansion and recession, Athens’ socio-demographic dynamics were considered a sort of “quasi-experiment” for Southern Europe, linking late suburbanization with the multiple impacts of (rapid) economic downturns. Compared with both urban and rural locations, a higher fertility rate in suburban municipalities (15–20 km away from downtown Athens) was observed during the study period. However, a subtle distinction was observed during the economic expansion versus the recession. In the first period, the highest birth rates were recorded in industrial locations west of Athens, hosting economically disadvantaged communities with a relatively young population structure. With the recession, the highest fertility was associated with residential and service-specialized (wealthier) locations east of Athens, attracting resident population from neighboring areas, and better responding to crisis. The results of our study document how recent urban expansion and economic downturns have intrinsically shaped fertility dynamics, with implications for urban sustainability and social cohesion of metropolitan regions.

Economic Downturns, Urban Growth and Suburban Fertility in a Mediterranean Context

“…The intrinsic coherence of our observed trends with the 'suburban fertility hypothesis' was more evident in the last two decades, namely between 2000 and 2020, although with some differences found in the local context during the two phases of economic expansion and recession. These results are in line with what was observed in Greece (Halbac-Cotoara-Zamfir et al 2021) and in other Mediterranean countries (e.g., Spain: Burillo et al 2020;Italy: Salvati et al 2020). These findings are also in line with earlier evidence collected for other European contexts and at different spatial scales (e.g., Kohler et al 2002;Morgan 2003;Kreyenfeld 2010;Goldstein et al 2013;Salvati et al 2013).…”

“…Starting from the empirical evidence of an earlier study hypothesizing the relevance of a 'suburban' fertility regime in the area for the last two-three decades of urban growth (Halbac-Cotoara-Zamfir et al 2021), the present work tests the relationship between a general fertility rate and the distance from inner cities in a monocentric model, using metropolitan Athens as a representative-while less investigated-socioeconomic context in Southern Europe. Providing a broaden operational perspective in respect with earlier studies-in terms of enlarged data coverage in both time and space and the statistical methodologies applied to both observational dimensions, the relationship between birth rates and distance from downtown was studied over a relatively long time interval (1860-2020), possibly characterized by the sequential dominance of the three fertility regimes mentioned above.…”