Socio-economic Determinants of Future Fertility Trends in Australia and other Developed Countries

In Australia and most other developed countries, fertility is below long-term replacement level. Small differences in even low fertility can mean significant different population and economic outcomes. Building on (1) a data bank of interrelations between Australian social and demographic change, and (2) the theory evolved from a current ARC grant (set out in Caldwell 2004, a well received paper in Population and Development Review), the most probable future path of Australian fertility and the conditions of divergence will be determined, and then applied more generally to other industrialized countries.