Specific pre-conditions of family changes in the new market-economy countries

Vlada Stankuniene, Institute for Social Research

From the beginning of the 1990s, in the countries with economies in transition (Central and East European countries), rapid family changes started. The set of the changes resembles strongly the ones, which are known as the second demographic transition: decrease and ageing of marriage and fertility, the spread of cohabitation, the increase of extra marital births. It can be assumed that the second demographic transition turned to this region as well. Nevertheless, the dimensions of family changes resemble those of the western countries, the preconditions of the changes or at least the initial push factors of the former, are hardly identical to those of the latter. In examining the above family changes in an East European country, in the case - Lithuania, attention will be drawn to a number of factors, which hardly fit into the accepted course and factor scheme of the second demographic transition in the western countries.