World Fertility Survey - Developed countries

The programme aimed to collect and analyse information to permit countries to “describe and interpret the fertility of their population”. The WFS was implemented with two core questionnaires: one aimed at developing countries in Africa, Asia, and South America with high fertility and low contraceptive use and another devised to be applied in developed countries in Europe and North‐America with low fertility and high contraceptive use.

The micro‐data collected in the 42 developing countries and Portugal are archived and accessible through the Demographic Health Survey (wfs.dhsprogram.com/). The micro‐data collected in the 20 developed countries are not centrally archived. In 2020, the Generations and Gender Programme received funding from the Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) for the project "International Microdata for Reproductive Studies – promoting and facilitating the use of forgotten and underused fertility and family planning surveys".