The replacement of generations in Portugal: a regional analysis (1930-1975)

Abstract

Since 1979, independently from the slow rise in some countries, fertility remains weack and clearly inferior to the level necessary to assure the replacement of generations in the Western Europe countries in general. What is the position of Portugal within this contex? Between 1977 and 1981, Portugal was, in principle, an (remarkable) exception to the tendency of recovering from the generalized fall in fertility already observed in some countries. The gross rate of natality and the fertility index went on declining in an accented way. Therefore, in global terms, we may say that Portugal was not renewing its generations any more. May one also say that such situation was the exact reflex of what was going on at the regional level? In reality would be any homogeneity? Though the nature and the shortage of the existant and available official data have forced the present work to be circumscribed to the 1930-75 period, without being posible, therefore, to give an immediate answer to those questions, the author was able to reveal the tending line of the phenomenon of the generation replacement in Portugal and even to reach some significant observation relevant for the making of that answer.