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Ireland’s fertility rate has decreased by 50% from an average of four children per woman to just two over the last 40 years. While it currently has one of the highest fertility rates in Europe, this may not continue, as Ireland continues to become more like its European partners. There are discrepancies between people’s ideal and expected number of children, demonstrating that people expect to have fewer children than they would ideally like to have. In order to better understand the factors contributing to people’s attitudes to having children, we examined potential predictors of ideal and expected family size. These included a wide range of measures including demographic characteristics and attitudinal variables. The results showed that the most significant predictors of both ideal and expected family size came from a range of attitudinal measures, which included Attitudes to Gender Roles, Attitudes to Having Children, Attitudes to Social Policies, and Attitudes to Family Formation, as well as measures of values and priorities, with only a single demographic characteristic a significant predictor, demonstrating the strong predictive power of attitudinal variables.

The chapter discusses the relationship between population growth and the natural environment as mediated through economic development. It discusses both the classical and the neoclassical theories of relationship between population growth and economic development with varying implications of the importance of population growth and environmental resource limitations in development theory and policy. It analyses the relationship between fertility behaviour and economic growth and reviews the theory and evidence of demographic transition in terms of micro-economic logic of income – price based choice of family size, gender power structure, property rights, family institution and cultural norms at the different stages of development. Finally the chapter discusses the impact of population growth on environment by way of direct pressure on resource use due to reproductive externalities and focuses on the vicious circular relationship among high fertility, poverty, low female empowerment and over use of commons in the rural sector with its policy implications.

While the current Irish birth rate is still high by European standards, at approximately two children per woman, the total fertility rate has nevertheless fallen 50% over the last four decades from approximately four children per woman in 1970 to two children today. This chapter discusses the causes, significance and implications of this and presents results of new measures developed to explore current attitudes to childbearing. Four distinct dimensions emerged through factor analysis, including a Belief in the Necessity of having Children for Fulfilment, Perceived Economic Constraints to having Children, Belief in the Value of Smaller Families, and the Belief that Men want Children as much as Women do. The prevalence of these attitudes in the representative sample is presented as well as differences among groups. Respondents’ ideal, expected and actual family size, as well as discrepancies between these, are also explored.