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Explaining Apparent Contradictions in Socio-demographic Pattern of Fertility in Mature Transitional Croatia

A recent Eurostat report on fertility trends in Europe (Lanzieri, 2013), discussing the present-day situation in 31 European countries against selected indicators of economic recession, has brought to light some unexpected and apparently contradictory results referring to the accession country of Croatia. While Croatia has on the whole consistently followed the patterns of average total fertility rates in the surrounding European Union countries in the periods 2000-2002, 2003-2005, 2006-2008, and 2009-2011, the most recent data show that – in contrast with the situation in some economically advanced EU countries – employed women with higher educational attainment tend to give more births than unemployed women with lower educational attainment. In this respect, Croatia is a polar opposite of Germany. Likewise, the fertility of educated and employed women in Croatia is among the highest in Europe, while in some Eastern European EU member countries fertility rates on the whole have returned to lowest-low” levels. This presentation aims to explain the apparent contradictions in socio-demographic patterns of fertility in late transitional Croatia, i.e. in the context in which the country – measured by the yardstick of readiness for EU accession – reached the stage of “mature transition”. The explanation is based on empirical data from a survey carried out in 2005 on a nationally representative sample, as well as on theoretical contextualizations of the social position, values and attitudes of women in Croatia in the periods of early (Tomić-Koludrović, Kunac, 2000) and mature transition (Tomić-Koludrović, Lončarić, 2007 ; Tomić-Koludrović, Zdravković, 2013). The conclusion is that – in spite of the consistently high appreciation of family values among women in Croatia - the current sociodemographic fertility patterns are not attributable to the alleged post-socialist retraditionalization, but rather to a mixture of the socialist heritage, postmodern values and trends related to the current economic crisis.

Croatia; transition; women; fertility; modernity

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