TRANSFORMATION OF FERTILITY IN URBAN AND RURAL AREAS IN SLOVAKIA AFTER 1989

Fertility in Slovakia has undergone several important changes since 1989. The main goal of this paper is to analyse the most important shifts in the rate and timing of fertility and of fertility in relation to marital status in urban and rural communities. At the same time, we also try to identify how the transformation period affected existing differences in selected aspects of fertility between urban and rural communities. In addition, we try to estimate how the current transformation has affected the cohort fertility and parity structure of women in those cohorts that were most affected by the transformation process after 1989. Our results confirmed the long-term higher fertility of women in rural communities as well as the obvious differences in the structure of women by parity between urban and rural communities. After 1989 transformational changes in the process of fertility occurred more dynamically in urban communities. Because of the faster recovery from the postponement of childbirth in urban communities, there has been some convergence in terms of fertility rate numbers. On the other hand, the more significant postponement of childbirth in urban areas has contributed to a deepening of the urban/rural differences in terms of fertility tempo.