Marriage and fertility in Russia of women born between 1900 and 1960: A cohort analysis

In this paper we present a demographic analysis of the marital and fertilit y careers of Russian women, born between 1900 and 1960 and based on individ ual retrospective life histories, collected in the most recent (five percen t) microcensus of the Russian Federation from 1994. It extends an earlier a nalysis of women born between 1910 and 1935. Although political events ofte n had profound effects on the marital life course, none of the observed cri ses in Russia has succeeded in exerting a decisive influence on the fertili ty transition. The fertility decline started late, but taking into account infant and child mortality that continued to be very high until the fifties , all generations born since 1920 had a completed fertility near or below r eplacement level.