Societal instability's impact on fertility outcomes

Yuri Frantsuz, University of Minnesota

The nature and direction of societal instability's impact on fertility reamins largely unkown. While in some instances like severe economic crisis and marekt reforms in the former USSR and Eastern European countires has resulted in the steep decline of fertility, in the other ones like banking crisis in iceland or terrorist attack of 09/11/2001, adversly, has led to the increase of birth rates. In the proposed paper I research the various types of instability's impact on fertility in the USSR/Russia for the period from 1953 to 1999. I define various years of this period in regard to the type and scope of instability they examplify. Among these types of instabilities are the ones manifested in the rifts among power elites, social and political unrest on bahalf of populace and severe deterioration of economic conditions coupled with uncertainty in the future. I use age-period-cohort models that allow for singling out the period effect, one of which is the impact of various types of instabilities. Based on the results of the model's application and the analysis of the possible effect of other period effects, I make a conclusion about each of societal instability's impact on fertility dynamics.