The dramatic scale of the drop in Irish fertility that has taken place during the past 40 years is most effectively summarised by the simple fact that while there are now 80 per cent more women of child-bearing age than there were 40 years ago, this greatly expanded cohort is producing only the same number of babies as in 1966, viz about 62,000 each year. Without this sharp fall in fertility, an additional 50,000 babies would currently be born each year, writes Garret FitzGerald
Two distinct elements have contributed to this phenomenon.
First, the fertility rate of married women has fallen to less than half that of married women 40 years ago. Nowadays less than one eighth of the child-bearing cohort 15-44 have a baby - whereas in 1966 one quarter of them did so each year. But that is only part of the story, because the proportion of women aged 15-44 who are married has also dropped by almost one-fifth - and although the non-marital birth rate has risen sevenfold since 1966, it is still barely one quarter of that for married women.
These developments are worth looking into in more detail. The fact that marital fertility has fallen to less than half of its 1966 rate is in part a consequence of much later marriages. The proportion of married people of child-bearing age who are under 30 - a cohort whose average fertility rate is significantly higher than that of married women in their thirties or early forties - has fallen since 1966 from over one quarter to just one eighth. The fact that there are now so few young married women accounts for well over one third of the overall decline in marital fertility - the remainder of the decline reflecting falling marital fertility in each individual age cohort.
Moreover, in combination with the increase of four-fifths in the total number of women of child-bearing age since 1966, the postponement of marriage has left us with well over twice as many single women in the 15-44 age cohort as there were in 1966. And the fact that a higher proportion of women are now in what is still the much lower-fertility "single woman" category has also significantly reduced our overall fertility rate.
An interesting feature of our non-marital birth rate is the way in which the relationship between fertility rates for married and single women vary markedly with age. First of all, the birth rate for single women below 25 years of age has always been - and still is - much lower than for those aged 25 to 39. But because less than 2 per cent of women in the younger age bracket are now married, marital births at that age level are now outnumbered over four to one by non-marital births to the enormously larger number of single women in that under-25 age bracket.
With age, the non-marital birth rate increases, reaching a peak in the 30-39 age group, where one single woman in 20 has a baby each year. And amongst women having babies in their early 40s, the non-marital birth rate is actually higher than that for married women - a little known fact.
This pattern may reflect two quite distinct factors. One of these must be the much increased level - and the now widespread social acceptance of - long-term cohabitation without marriage. But another and quite different one will have been the way in which new social pressures of one kind or another have been working to frustrate some women's instinct to have a child or children within a stable relationship. .
This development reflects the distortions introduced into our society by the scale of economic and social pressures on women, including those with small children, to engage in paid employment. We have exchanged a society in which married women were formerly discouraged from working outside the home - and in the public service were even banned from doing so - for one in which they come under social and financial pressure to undertake paid work regardless of whether they have small children. For one thing, much more onerous housing costs require a second income in many homes. And our Government's over-preoccupation with maximising economic growth has led it to individualise the income tax system as an incentive to women to engage in paid work at the expense of parental child-care.
At the same time, in clear disregard of the interests of children, no adequate public provision is made in this State for maternity leave - let alone paternity leave - because the Government, in disregard of the needs of children for parental care in their earliest years, has persistently caved in to pressure from employers who are resistant to this kind of provision and are anxious that nothing be done that might reduce even marginally the volume of labour available to them.
I find it surprising that these kinds of family social issues do not seem to have been raised yet in the election campaign. I would have thought that the social desirability of facilitating parental care for young children, as well as its attractiveness to a significant segment of the electorate, would have led some political party to promise positive action on parental leave, provision for which is much more generous in many other European countries.
Despite the sharp fall in Irish fertility over the past four decades, our reproduction rate nevertheless remains higher than elsewhere in Europe by a substantial margin. If women continued in the years ahead to have children at today's rate, over 190 children would eventually be born to every 100 women. But although that is a considerably higher fertility rate than elsewhere in our continent, it is still insufficient to ensure the long-term maintenance of our population without immigration. However, in this respect we are still a good distance away from the situation in eastern Europe, where deaths now exceed births, and population decline is already well under way almost everywhere.
Should we have a population policy? Given the problems that can arise from later childbirth, there is a case for encouraging earlier marriage and child-bearing. And although our overall fertility rate is high by European standards, our current heavy dependence upon immigration for an adequate labour supply suggests there might also be an economic case for measures to boost our birth rate. That has traditionally been a French policy objective, maintained despite the fact that the French fertility rate is at the same relatively high level by European standards as ours.