The common measure of fertility is the period total fertility rate (TFR). The TFR is the number of children that a hypothetical woman would have throughout her child-bearing years, calculated by summing the age-specific birth rates of all women in the reference year. (The age-specific birth rate means the average number of children born to women of a given age in the reference year.) Decisions by women to delay having children (currently the case in the EU2) can lower the TFR via a ‘tempo effect’, even though in the long run, the delay may not change the total number of children those women will have.
In 2002, TFR was only 1.46 for the EU-27 as a whole and in a number of MS (Spain, Greece, Italy and eight of the MS that joined the EU after 2004) it fell below 1.3 to ‘lowest-low’ level. (At that rate, assuming no other changes, the population of Europe would shrink from over 500 to 120 million in one century). Some researchers argued that such a low TFR might push countries into a ‘fertility trap’ where lower fertility leads to ever decreasing expectations of family size, and population ageing creates ever more barriers to having children.
However since 2002, TFR has risen in all MS except Cyprus, Luxembourg and Portugal. In real terms, 5.2 million children were born in the EU in 2011, below the roughly 7.5 million born per year in the 1960s, but above the 5 million born in 2002. TFR remains below replacement levels in all EU MS (1.57 for the EU as a whole), but this low TFR may be due in part to the transitory effect of women delaying having children (see box). A 2013 study estimating an alternative measure, cohort fertility rate (CFR), concluded that actual births will likely be above the numbers suggested by current TFR levels, bringing many MS closer to, though still below, true replacement level.
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