BB: Population Aging in Europe: Discourse, Policy Responses and Outcomes

(Southeast) European countries are experiencing the lowest birth rates in recorded history, which have long fallen below the 2.1 children per woman necessary for population replacement, helping give rise to a wide range of pronatalist policy responses. This talk, which stands at the intersection between social policy, demography, and political science, will shed light on four dimensions of pronatalism in (Southeast) Europe, corresponding to the four chapters of the presenter’s doctoral thesis.

The first dimension relates to the discursive representation of pronatalism and examines the frames (socioeconomic, patriotic, ethnic, and moral) through which policymakers have sought to “justify” pronatalist policy interventions in North Macedonia and Serbia. The second dimension addresses the policy interventions themselves, focusing on child benefits as the key pronatalist policy instrument across Europe, and comparing benefit generosity (in aggregate terms as well as by household income and the age and birth order of the child) in 26 European countries. The third dimension assesses the predictive power of a number of macroeconomic, sociocultural and political drivers for the generosity of (pronatalist) child benefits and their variation by household income, child age, and birth order. Finally, the fourth dimension seeks to answer the fundamental question around pronatalist policy interventions (do they work?) by estimating the effect of child benefits on birth rates around Europe since 2002.

Kristijan Fidanovski is a researcher at the Vienna Institute for Economic Studies focusing on tobacco taxation in Eastern Europe and macroeconomic analysis in the Western Balkans. He is also a final-year PhD Candidate at the University of Oxford’s Department of Social Policy and Intervention and a former Junior Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, where he has examined the discursive representation, policy manifestation, political drivers, and fertility outcomes of pronatalism in (Eastern) Europe. His other research interests include labor market adaptation to population aging, EU integration, and electoral systems. He has provided consulting services to the European Union, The Economist Intelligence Unit, Oxford Analytica, and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, among others. He holds an MA and BA in East European Studies from Georgetown University and University College London, respectively.