EAST-GERMAN FERTILITY AFTER UNIFICATION - CRISIS OR ADAPTATION

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germans have drastically chang ed their demographic behavior. Marriages and births have dropped to an unprecedentedly low level. The authors track birth rates of the East German population, past, present, and future and propose a simulation model of future cohort fertility. Their hypotheses build on the histor ical record of reproductive behavior in the German Democratic Republic between 1960 and 1989 and on an analysis of the pattern of change bet ween 1990 and 1994. They argue that East German couples will rapidly w esternize their family size by trying to reach completed fertility lev els of the corresponding West German cohort. This implies that the res ulting adaptation process includes the postunification crisis as a log ical first step.