Value Change and Demographic Behaviour in the Czech Republic

Abstract

The deep structural changes witnessed in the Czech Republic in the past decade, ie, the establishment of a democratic political regime & market economy, & the transformation of the social security system, could not have steered clear of the everyday life & behavioral patterns of the Czech population. One of the areas that have been profoundly affected is demographic behavior. Marriage & fertility rates in particular have decreased to an unprecedented level. The main thesis of this paper is that the demographic changes in the Czech Republic result from a condensed progress of the second demographic transition, which was triggered off by a value change in young age cohorts born in the 1970s & early 1980s. The new value orientations of these cohorts, which were latently present even before the political change, manifested themselves fully in the free environment of the new democratic society. The paper will present evidence of the value changes by utilizing the data from the 1991 & 1999 European Values Study. It is argued that the coincidence of value & demographic changes can hardly be regarded as accidental.