1980 HUNGARIAN CENSUS OF POPULATION Summary data (1984)

IX. THE DEVELOPMENT OF FERTILITY

The number of children per 100 women is naturally increasing parallel with the growth in the age of husband and wife, so in 1960 and in 1980 the fifty and over same-aged-couples' number of children is the highest (317 and 225 children respectively). Although the fertility of couples composed of 30-39 or 50 or over aged wife and 15-19 aged husband (245 and 235 respectively) exceeds the former, this - if we consider the low number observations - do not influence the general tendency. In connection with the social-economics transformation, the educational level of the population - especially of the women - rose at a fast pace in the past decades. The educational level of married women in reproductive age is even more favourable than of all married women, because a considerable part of them are young, student aged. In this improvement also played a role the replacement of the old, relatively low educated strata by the more educated young. The fact that the lowest educated, most fertile - they usually do not use any kind of contraception - stratum lost its decisive weight among reproductive aged married women, had a decreasing effect on fertility. Although the fertility of such women, having less than 8 grades of primary education, increased since 1960 (from 231 to 250 per 100 women), but the proportion of this stratum among reproductiv aged women fell back from 66 percent to 15 percent. Only families so low educated give birth to as many children as needed to simple reproduction, but from the point of view of overall fertility the weight of this stratum is becoming less and less considerable. Among the fertility aged married women, the fertility of those with 8 grades of primary education as highest education - they constitute the majority - also increased gradually in the past two decades; but their average number of children is still by 32 percent less than of the less educated. The average number of children of the secondary or higher educated decreased between 1960 and 1970, and then in the past decade it rose above the twenty years earlier level, but it is still much lower than of any lower educated stratum. The growth in the fertility in every educational group of married women in reproductive age was due to the population policy measures introduced in 1973, as a result of which women brought forward the birth of the wanted children. The measures affected first of all the large young generations born in the fifties who reached the reproductive age in the seventies. This is proved by the fact, that there was no growth in the fertility of the 40-49 aged women who completed fertility, but the general decreasing tendency in the number of children could be observed in every educational group. The negative effect of the rise in the educational level on fertility is shown by the standardized indicator for the 1960 distribution, according to which if the educational level distribution had been the same as in 1960, the number of children would have been 217 per 100 reproductive aged women in 1980 instead of 172. If we examine the number of children distribution of women by educational level, we get proportions different from the national average. The proportion of childless women is considerably higher than the national average among the higher educated (by 61 percent) and among the secondary educated (by 39 percent) women. The respective proportion is below the national average for those with 8 or less primary grades. The proportion of married women having one child exceeds the national average in the educational groups of those who completed the 8 grades of primary education (by 7, 30, and 23 percent respec-. tively), while the proportions for lower educated are below the national average (by 22 percent for those who completed 6-7 grades, by 41 percent for those who completed 1-5 grades, and 67 percent for the completely uneducated). In the past 60 years - and especially since the liberation - important social and economic changes happened in the country, which obviously affected the way of life and the occupation of the women and so the fertility. The two most important indicators of these changes are the growing economic activity of women and the considerable decrease in the proportion of the agricultural population. The large extent economic progress and the restructuring of the economy meant considerable demand for labour which could be met by - among others - the growing employment of women. In favour of this many government measures were introduced which aimed the gradual cessation of factors impeding the expansion of the employment of women. At the same time the protection of working mothers became an institutional social task. The most important among these measures was the introduction of child-care-allowance in 1967, which can be considered modern even by international standards and which affected considerably the employment of women. The difference in the fertility of active earner and dependant women was considerable in 1920, the number of children per 100 active earner women was 266 and 378 per 100 dependant women. In the course of the past 6 decades the fertility of both the active earners and dependants decreased by 3 5 percent. This does not prove the assumption that the decreasing fertility was caused by the growing eco131