Being more sensitive to economic fluctuations, childbearing postponement increased during the second demographic transition and was accompanied by a moderate decline in the number of children per woman and the progressive rise of mother’s age at first birth. Under the hypothesis that recessions have a marked influence on population dynamics, the present study investigates spatial changes in mother’s age at birth in Greece with the aim to assess the differential impact of economic crisis along the urban-rural gradient. The percent composition of births by mother's age class – considered a gross indicator of fertility under a changing socioeconomic context – was studied at 4 spatial scales (the whole country, administrative regions, prefectures and metropolitan areas or specific economic districts) over an economic cycle from expansion to recession (1980–2016). While stimulating childbearing postponement observed since the early 1980s, empirical results of this study indicate that the 2007 recession was quite neutral on fertility trends in Greece, consolidating the traditional divide between urban and rural areas.

Changes in the size and the age structure of a population have a great impact on an economy, especially on national savings and capital flows. Poland’s population, although still relatively young when compared to other developed countries, is expected to experience accelerated ageing and decline in forthcoming decades. In this paper, we assess the effects of these processes for Polish economy. Using an open-economy OLG model with demographic shocks and a variable retirement age, we simulate dynamics of real interest rates, main macro aggregates as well as net foreign assets to GDP. We show that rapid ageing will reduce the interest rate gap between Poland and the developed countries by 1.3-2 p.p. We also document a strong positive relationship between interest rates and the retirement age and find that the decline in the interest rate in Poland is primarily driven by the surviving probability shock