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Welcome to the Cohort Fertility and Education Database

The Cohort Fertility and Education (CFE) database provides high-quality data on completed cohort fertility and parity distribution by level of education. The data come from censuses and large sample surveys, and cover several (mostly European) countries, i.e. countries with generally high levels of education and relatively low fertility. As the database is in a constant progress, data from new countries and sources are being regularly added.
If you want to keep up-to-date with the CFE database, you can subscribe to an rss RSS feed.

What you can find in the CFE Database

The data in the CFE Database are freely accessible to all interested users and focus on women and men who have completed or almost completed their family building. When available, also historical data from 20th century censuses and pertaining to the cohorts born since the late 19th century are included. In the database, you find the following standardised indicators (all available for the total population and by level of education, for women and, if possible, for men):

  • completed fertility rate (CFR)
  • CFR by birth order
  • share of women with specific number of children ever born (including childless women)
  • parity progression ratios (PPR)

Apart from that, we provide you with the non-standardised input (source) data, i.e. the absolute number of women (and men, if possible) by:

  • birth cohort
  • level of education (including those with unknown education)
  • number of children ever born (including those with unknown number of children)
  • (if possible) country of birth, i.e. those born in the country vs. those born abroad

For all data in the database, education is given as ISCED-97.

How to use the CFE Database

The data are categorised by highest level of education achieved (given as ISCED-97). When available, they are are shown separately for women or men born in the country and those born abroad (the origin status). For each country a brief description of each survey or census as well as the country’s education system is provided in the Documentation file. You can find more information about the database in the ABOUT section; more details about the methodology (and about the way the indicators have been computed), are available in the METHODS section.
The EURREP database supports enhanced possibilities to explore and visualise the data. For each country and survey / census, you can:

  • generate and download a table with indicators of your interest (as a csv-file)
  • generate graphs and view them online (interactive graphs), download them (static graphs in a pdf, png, jpeg or svg format) or print them directly
  • make your own computations by downloading the original input dataset (press the Get dataset as CSV button).

To search the database, please go to the DATABASE section, where you can choose the country and survey of your interest, and then do the following:

  • aggregate the data by cohort, education  and, if available, the origin status
  • choose indicators your are interested in (CFR, PPR, parity distribution)
  • filter out cohorts, educational groups (and, if available, origin status and sex) you do not want to see or analyse
  • download your user-defined table and / or
  • generate a graph

For a quick guide to how to explore the database step by step, click here.