June 28, 2011 The global economic recession of 2008-2009 has
been followed by a decline in fertility rates in Europe and the
United States, bringing to an end the first concerted rise in
fertility rates in the developed world since the 1960s,
according to research published June 28. "In a new study,
scientists from the Vienna Institute of Demography of the
Austrian Academy of Sciences (VID) and the International
Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) identify that
economic recessions tend to be followed by a decline in
fertility rates -- and also identify how specific groups of
people are influenced by a recession." The 2008-2009 global
economic recession, the first major recession since that caused
by the oil shocks of the 1970s, brought a sudden trend reversal
to the previous pattern of rising fertility rates in several
highly developed countries, including Spain and the United
States. A larger group of countries including England and Wales,
Ireland, Italy, and Ukraine experienced stagnation of fert