Fertility and economic growth of selected transition countries

Abstract

The paper investigates the impact of total fertility rate as one of the basic demographic variables on economic growth per capita concerning six selected transition countries (including the five countries of the Western Balkans: Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, and Croatia as a member of the European Union), from 2000 to 2018. The fundamental idea of the research is the view discussed in the recent literature and it concerns the reduction of the total fertility rate as a burning problem of a large number of developed modern economies. Inspired by the question of whether such an attitude is relevant for a group of small European transition countries, an econometric model was constructed , as a framework for the application of statistical analysis of multiple regression. The results of empirical research showed that if the rate of total fertility increased by 0.1% in one of the analyzed countries, the GDP growth rate per capita for this country would fall by 0.53 percentage points in the same year of the period under review.

Keywords

• demographic transition
• fertility
• total fertility rate
• economic growth
• transition countries