POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW 38(1): 83–120 (MARCH 2012) 83 A Demographic Explanation for the Recent Rise in European Fertility JOHN BONGAARTS TOMÁŠ SOBOTKA FERTILITY AS MEASURED by the period total fertility rate (TFR) rose in the large majority of European countries between 1998 and 2008. This trend represents an unexpected reversal from the historically unprecedented low levels reached by most countries in the 1990s or early 2000s. Increases from these minimum levels have exceeded 0.2 births per woman in 19 European countries (Goldstein, Sobotka, and Jasilioniene 2009). The turnaround has been especially rapid in populations with the lowest fertility: the number of countries with a TFR below 1.3 declined from 16 in 2002 to just one (Moldova) in 2008. This new trend suggests that the potential adverse consequences of population aging and population decline will likely be substantially smaller than feared in the 1990s. Explanations for this new phenomenon can be provided at two lev- els, demographic and socioeconomic. Proposed demographic explanations include the disappearance of period tempo effects that distorted the TFR downward in the past as women’s age at childbearing rose (Bongaarts and Feeney 1998; Philipov and Kohler 2001; Bongaarts 2002; Sobotka 2004; Goldstein, Sobotka, and Jasilioniene 2009), and a cohort-driven recupera- tion at older ages of births that were postponed at younger ages (Lesthaeghe and Willems 1999; Frejka and Sardon 2009; Frejka 2010; Goldstein, So- botka, and Jasilioniene 2009; Neels and de Wachter 2010; Sobotka, Zeman, Lesthaeghe, and Frejka 2011). Further back in the chain of causation are social and economic determinants and pronatalist or family policies that affect the quantum and tempo of childbearing. Analytical attention has been paid especially to changes in family policies (Goldstein, Sobotka, and Jasilioniene 2009; OECD 2011; Hoorens et al. 2011), positive economic trends and declining unemployment before 2008 (Goldstein, Sobotka, and Jasilioniene 2009; Örsal and Goldstein 2010), the possible reversal of the