Persistently low birth rates contribute to population ageing and growing inequalities, posing a challenge to social and financial sustainability in many developed countries. Fertility declines in Europe over the last decade were triggered by the 2008 economic and financial crisis, and many countries continued to register negative trends years after the recovery. While enduring economic uncertainty explains part of these trends, most of the determinants of the prolonged decline remain unascertained. It is similarly unclear which long-term impact Covid-19 will have on fertility trends. 

The existing literature tends to consider crises only as economic, rather than social, phenomena. Yet, recessions impact on social interactions, weaken the rules of good conduct, reduce trust and cooperation, thereby instilling an additional sense of insecurity, affecting individuals beyond economic circumstances. In this project, I synthesise these aspects under the notion of social uncertainty, whose effects on fertility have been largely overlooked until now.

Focusing on a long-term time span that includes both the Great Recession and Covid-19, this project aims at revealing how social forms of uncertainty influence fertility decisions. Based on the innovative multi record-linkage of survey data and population registers, this project will be able to make ground-breaking contributions by:

[1] establishing a novel conceptual framework, which integrates multiple domains and encompasses uncertainty generated at the micro-, meso- and macro-levels;

[2] uncovering the independent and interdependent effects of social and economic uncertainties on the entire childbearing decisional process, from intended to realised fertility;

[3] unveiling the potential role of welfare states to moderate the effect of uncertainty on childbearing decisions;

[4] shedding light on the socioeconomic inequalities involved in the process linking uncertainty perceptions to unfulfilled family plans.

This research project has the potential to generate enormous gains in understanding the determinants of persistently low fertility in contemporary societies, with a significant impact on future research in the field.