A Changing Relationship between Fertility and Economic Development at the Sub- national Regional Level? Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Evidence from 258 European regions

Recently presented evidence for nation states suggests that the long-standing negative relationship between socioeconomic development and fertility tends to turn positive at high levels of development. This article introduces the sub-national regional dimension to this debate. It focuses on Europe, which comprises a number of highly developed countries with comparatively high fertility rates. In the theoretical section, we revisit considerations how modernization processes in the 19 and 20 centuries led to a negative association between economic and fertility outcomes across sub-national regions of developed countries. This is followed by the discussion of important recent trends, which offer possible reasons underlying a potential reversal of the fertility-economic development relationship at the sub-national regional level. We then investigate empirically whether this convex relationship between regional fertility and economic development is detectable within European countries. Using a country-by-year fixed effects model, we find evidence for an inverse J-shaped relationship between fertility and per capita income occurring in nearly every country for which evidence exists in Europe. However, there does not seem to be a single inversion point general across areas. In addition, inclusion of regional fixed effects controls for much of the estimated convexity. This suggests that those factors controlled for by the regional fixed effects, but for which income per capita might be a proxy, are important in determining fertility differences across regions. These could include regional level differences in childcare policies, female labour force participation, culture, or other factors.