Demography and social economy, 2018, 2(33):53-66
doi: https://doi.org/10.15407/dse2018.02.053
UDC 314.146
JEL CLASSIFICATION: J13

S.Yu. Aksyonova
PhD (Economics), Leading scientific worker
Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies
of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine ,
03032, Kyiv, blvd T. Shevchenko, 60
E-mail: Svitlana_Aksyonova@yahoo.com

THE MEAN AGE OF MOTHER AT BIRTH: IS A REVERSAL POSSIBLE?
Section: DEMOGRAPHIC PROCESSES
Language: Ukrainian
Abstract: The purpose of the paper is to study the cohort and period mean age of a mother at birth in Ukraine and to expose the possibility of reversion in the coming decades of the general trend of advance of maternal age that has been taking place in our country since 1997. The cohort analysis allows avoiding incorrect conclusions and assumptions about the characteristics of demographic changes, so in the article much attention is paid to the transformational processes in cohort. The data of the international project Human Fertility Database is used in our research. The paper examines the features of transformations of the mean age of the mother at birth in cohorts in which the trend of «rejuvenation» of motherhood has changed on new trend of advanced maternal age. In the developed countries of Europe the cohorts of women born at the end of World War II and the first post-war years characterize the lowest mean age at birth. This indicator gradually increased for all subsequent cohorts. In Ukraine the mean age of the mother at birth has started to increase two decades later. Despite the significant growth of indicator (the period mean age at birth increased from 24.4 years (all birth order) in 1996 to 27.4 years in 2016) Ukraine has the lowest mean age of the mother at birth among European countries. Advanced maternal age is one of the key characteristics of the second demographic transition. The significant lag of Ukraine from developed European countries in terms of the mean age at birth, the later beginning of the second demographic transition and experience of countries where such transition occurred much earlier than in our country indicate that maternal age in Ukraine will continue to increase in the next decades. At the same time, deviations from the main direction of transformation are not excluded under the influence of extraordinary events which are capable of disrupting development for a certain period. It is proposed to conduct a study of the peculiarities of the tendency to postpone the birth of a child in the conditions of Ukraine.
Key words: fertility, motherhood, advanced maternal age, mean age at birth, mean age at birth of the first child, period and cohort fertility.
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