Cohort fertility changes and period fertility in 1960-1990 in Finland

In Finland, like in most European countries, the total fertility rate declined from a level of 2.5 births per woman in the middle of the 1960s below the replacement level of 2.1 births during the late sixties. This change has been called Europe’s second demographic transition. This paper aims to describe the changes in cohort fertility during and after this transition. The cohorts whose fertility is examined include the cohorts of women bom between 1923-24 and 1961-62. The cohort fertility data are from unpublished tables of Statistics Finland. Total fertility decreased from 2.6 births per woman in the cohort 1923-24 to the level of 1.8-1.9 births per woman in the cohorts 1943-44 and has stayed at this level in younger cohorts. The most prominent change in fertility behavior in recent years has been delaying births later in life. This transformation has been going on since the cohorts born in the middle of the 1940s. In calendar time this transformation started in the late sixties which suggests that the new contraception methods played an important role in it. Cohort fertility results are used in interpreting period fertility trends and variability in the last decades.