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Human life expectancy has risen in most developed countries over the last century, causing the observed demographic shifts. Babel, Bomsdorf and Schmidt (forthcoming) introduce a stochastic mortality model using panel data procedures which distinguishes between a common time effect and a common age effect of mortality evolvement. Using this mortality model, the present paper provides forecasts of future life expectancy for 17 countries divided into 12 regions: Australia, Alps, Bene, Canada, England and Wales, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Scandinavia and the United States of America. We consider (traditional) period life expectancies as well as cohort life expectancies, the latter being a more realistic approach but less common. It turns out that a continuing increase of life expectancy is expected in all considered countries. Further, we show that the probabilistic uncertainty of forecast life expectancies is different if either period life expectancies or cohort life expectancies are considered and, moreover, the uncertainty increases substantially if the error of parameter estimation is included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of recent fertility trends in the West has been dominated by examinations of Europe. A better perspective on twentieth-century fertility movements can be gained by giving an equal emphasis to trends in the 'Offshoots' (USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). This paper focuses on the periods of rapid fertility decline and to a greater extent on the intervening periods of near-equilibrium. It is suggested that the 'late twentieth century compromise' is more stable than is suggested by reports on its internal strains, and that only massive government intervention could raise fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline in fertility in Australia in the 1990s reflected both decreased first-order birth rates and decreased second-order birth rates (Kippen 2004). Whilst childlessness has been studied extensively, little attention has been paid to the progression from one to two children. This study analyses which women stop at one child using data from 1,809 parous 40-54 year olds from Wave 1 of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. Important early lifecourse predictors of whether a woman stops her childbearing at one child are shown to be a woman's country of birth, highest level and type of schooling, and her father's occupation. A woman's marital status and her age at the time of the first birth are also shown to be significant predictors of her likelihood of not progressing to a second birth. The causes of trends over time are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]