1980 HUNGARIAN CENSUS OF POPULATION Summary data (1984)

IX. THE DEVELOPMENT OF FERTILITY

IX. The development of fertility The fertility of married women is characterized by the gradual and permanent decrease of the number of births in the past six decades. At the time of the 1920 census there had been 362 births per 100 married women, in 1980 there was only 189. As a matter of fact the extent of the decrease was the same in every decade since 1920, about 10 percent. The gradual decrease of the fertility can be traced since the last decades of the past century, moreover the decrease was considerable in the decade preceding the first World War. In the period between the two World Wars the decrease in the number of births went on. The fertility data of those 3 decades which are significant from the point of view of the present are not much more favourable. The gradual decrease - although at lesser extent - was considerable also between 1949 and 1980. The data for the different decades show the traces of various population policy measures, but decreasing tendency definitely holds on. The extent of the decrease was the same (10 percent) between 1949 and 1960 as before the Second World War. In 1956 the administrative measures were abolished, and the effect of this is shown in the decrease in the number of children per 100 married women from 232 to 205 (12 percent) between 1960 and 1970. In the last 10 years the decrease was lesser extent, because the effects of government rulings were in favour of the birth rates. So the decrease in the number of children per 100 married women was only 8 percent, from 205 to 189 between 1970 and 1980. The same favourable tendency is shown in the live birth rate, which was relatively high in the middle of the seventies (16-18 per thousand). The indicators for the end of the decade show that the rise ended, in fact there has been a large extent decrease in the number of births in recent years. (The live birth rate was 15. 0 per thousand in 1979 and only 13. 9 per thousand in 1980.) The decrease can be explained by the advanced births which were the result of new population policy measures introduced in 1973. The development of the fertility of widowed women is similar to married women - so it decreased to large extent. But in the case of widowed women the census data indicate the completed fertility, so they reflect the 20-30 years ago fertility habits. The indicator of the number of children per 100 widowed women decreased from 477 to 242 in the course of the past 60 years, which means that women give birth to half as many children in their lifetime as two generations ago. We have data on the fertility of unmarried women only since 1960. Between 1960 and 1970 there was a decrease in the fertility of unmarried women, in the last decade there was a slight increase (18, 10, 12). It is possible that the spread of modern contraception had a decreasing effect on the fertility of unmarried women, because the number of unmarried women who reared children decreased considerably (by 26 percent) since 1960. This decrease was greater (28 percent) between 1960 and 1970 than between 1970 and 1980, the explanation for this lesser extent decrease may be the change in the attitude towards children born outside marriage. The development of the fertility of women by marital status Year Number of children per 100 Year married widowed divorced unmarried Year women 1920 362 477 1930 327 . . . , . , 1949 257 366 133 , . 1960 232 337 151 18 1970 205 281 153 10 1980 189 242 151 12 127