This comprehensive, nuanced and accessible book considers the full breadth of the factors that drive fertility rates across the globe, including recent changes in the biological ability to have children, education and work, the financial costs of childbearing, how we create, build and end relationships, sex, contraception, assisted reproductive technology, values and fertility preferences. Providing a thorough historical context, Vergard Skirbekk explains how fertility is related to population growth, ageing and composition. The book also makes a number of recommendations about what governments should be doing (but mostly aren’t), to help people realize their individual fertility preferences and – especially in industrialized countries – adapt to a world with fewer children.The book will be if interest to anyone who is interested in how current and future birth rates will affect our sharedfuture, but will be especially valuable to researchers and students of demography, social statistics, medical sociologists, family and childhood studies, human geographers, sociology of culture, social and public policy. weiterlesen