'Plus ca change ...' change and stasis in the age of Irish fertility, 1961-2002: a spatio-temporal analysis

Since the 1960s Irish fertility has undergone dramatic change. Whilst the broad outlines of both the nature and the origins of such change are, by now, well engough known and understood, little attention has been paid to the way in which changes in age specific fertility have been manifested regionally. This paper uses cluster analysis to group counties and county boroughs/cities according to their age-specific profiles of fertility at each full cencus year between 1961 and 2002 and then ANOVA to identify meaningful statistical relationships between cluster membership in each year and varibles descriptive of the demographic and socio-economic context.