Fertility and family size in Western Europe

"It is known that the fertility decline in Western Europe started almost everywhere in the mid-1960s, that the national trends have run in parallel, and that the reason was essentially the decrease in the numbers of large families, or even their complete disappearance. However, for want of comparable data, international comparisons are often limited to annual fertility indices, and do not distinguish changes due to reduced family size from those which are the result of changes in fertility timing....[The author presents,] for a broad range of countries, an analysis by cohort and birth order. This makes it possible to measure the fertility decline in more detail, to compare its amplitude in the various parts of Europe, and to study its mechanisms."