Meeting in Budapest
Budapest, 26/27 May 2010
The REPRO Consortium meeting in Budapest was mainly dedicated to discussing the work accomplished in all work packages with the Steering Board members. The policy implications of the main findings and the interrelations between the studies conducted in the different work packages were given special attention. Another important item on the agenda was the Policy Brief on the main findings of the REPRO project prepared by Dimiter Philipov and Maria Rita Testa.
- Olivier Thévenon (WP 2) gave an overview of the macro perspective on fertility trends and institutional context. He was asked to enlarge and refine the policy analysis and to make the extensive data collection available to other scholars in the future.
- Jane Klobas (WP 3) presented her analysis on fertility decision-making. She gained many insights and will focus on a coherent presentation of them in her future work.
- In the session on work package 4, Zsolt Spéder presented a paper on the realisation of fertility intentions and the postponement black-box. Maria Iacovou summarised the latest findings of her work on the fact that people have fewer children than expected. Both presenters were advised to clearly indicate that their studies do not consider fertility-related behaviour (sexual relationship, timing of intercourses, contraception, abortion, etc.) but only the outcome of this behaviour, i.e. births.
- In the overview of work package 6, Aart Liefbroer reported about macro-level determinants of fertility decision-making, Maria Rita Testa presented her analysis on child-number and child-timing intentions in a micro-macro European framework and Eva-Maria Merz outlined her study on the role of individual and country factors with respect to fertility across Europe. They were advised to refine the selection of the macro indicators and to make it consistent with the macro factors adopted by Olivier Thévenon.
- In his paper on the purpose, issues and messages of policy recommendations, Tomáš Sobotka discussed the optimal way of conveying the main message from REPRO’s analytical work to policy-makers. Anne Gauthier pointed out that the aim of the REPRO project was not to test the efficacy of different policies but to provide empirical evidence to help policy-makers formulate the most suitable policy measures. The Steering Board encouraged the REPRO partners to continue their collaboration after the REPRO project.
All Steering Board members were invited to participate in the final conference of the REPRO project entitled “From intentions to behaviour: reproductive decision-making in a macro-micro perspective”, which will be held in Vienna/Austria in the beginning of December 2010.
