Sub-Replacement Fertility Intentions in Austria

Combining the data of the 1986–2001 Microcensus surveys, I reconstruct trends in fertility intentions across time and over the life course of Austrian women born since the 1950s. Young adults in Austria expressed fertility intentions that were below the replacement-level threshold as early as in 1986 and women born since the mid-1950s consistently desired fewer than two children on average throughout their reproductive lives. A two-child family norm, however, still clearly dominates the fertility intentions of different age, cohort and education groups. Uncertainty about childbearing intentions is rather common, especially among younger and childless respondents. Different assumptions about reproductive preferences of undecided respondents affect estimates of the mean intended family size. Although Austrians were among the first in Europe to express low fertility intentions, their position is no longer unique. By the early 2000s, young women in a number of other European countries also expressed sub-replacement fertility intentions.     

The Positive Effect of Women’s Education on Fertility in Low-Fertility China

Despite pervasive evidence of more educated women having lower fertility, it remains unclear whether education reduces women’s fertility. This study presents new evidence of the causal effect of women’s education on fertility from China, where fertility has remained below the replacement level since the early 1990s. To account for endogeneity, the study exploits the timing and varying intensity of China’s higher education expansion as exogenous sources of increase in women’s education. Using data from China General Social Survey (2010–2012), findings show that each year of women’s education induced by the higher education expansion increases the number of children ever born by 10%. According to the average marginal effects, each additional year of women’s education increases the number of children ever born by 0.14, decreases the probability of having no children by 3 percentage points, and increases the probability of having two or more children by 4 percentage points. Two mechanisms drive the positive effect of education: first, education does not cause an increase in the mean age at first marriage; second, among ever-married women, education increases their demand for children. Findings from this study have important implications for China and other low-fertility developing countries.     

从富阳实例看浙江富裕农村育龄妇女生育意愿转变

本文根据１９９７年浙江富阳农村育龄妇女生育意愿的调查结果,分析了５０年代、６０年代、７０年代出生的三个育龄妇女群体在初婚年龄、生育数量、性别偏好三方面的差异,以观察现阶段浙江农村育龄妇女生育意愿转变的特征,并在此基础上,提出了工作对策     

Like Mother(-in-Law) Like Daughter? Influence of the Older Generation’s Fertility Behaviours on Women’s Desired Family Size in Bihar,India

This paper investigates the associations between preferred family size of women in rural Bihar, India and the fertility behaviours of their mother and mother-in-law. Scheduled interviews of 440 pairs of married women aged 16–34 years and their mothers-in-law were conducted in 2011. Preferred family size is first measured by Coombs scale, allowing us to capture latent desired number of children and then categorized into three categories (low, medium and high). Women’s preferred family size is estimated using ordered logistic regression. We find that the family size preferences are not associated with mother’s fertility but with mother’s education. Mother-in-law’s desired number of grandchildren is positively associated with women’s preferred family size. However, when the woman has higher education than her mother-in-law, her preferred family size gets smaller, suggesting that education provides women with greater autonomy in their decision-making on childbearing.     

妇女当家会强化低生育水平吗?——一项关于家庭权力与生育决策的实证研究

妇女地位的提升对降低生育率有着重要作用。在低生育水平的湖北宜昌农村地区,数据分析表明,家庭权力在生育决策中产生重要影响,男性的生育观念更为传统,男性主导家庭权力可以提高家庭的生育意愿,而女性拥有越来越自主的生育决策权力以及更理性的、以核心家庭幸福为准则的生育观,但在这部分地区,没有证据显示妇女当家会直接降低生育率。因此,在妇女家庭权力日渐提升的趋势下,为防范极低生育水平、提升农村家庭的发展能力、为妇女生育提供良好的家庭支持和社会支持环境尤为重要。     

当代青年农民的生育观探析——基于河北省临漳县H村的走访调查

生育观即人们对于生育问题的根本看法和态度。当代青年农民既没有固守"多子多福,重男轻女"的传统生育观,也没有形成国家计划生育基本国策所提倡的"只生一个好,生男生女都一样"的现代生育观,注重自己及子女生活质量的现世伦理成为当代青年农民生育观的基石,"一儿一女"成为其理想目标。     

Pathways to a Third Child in Sweden

The transition from two to three children is investigated, using data on Swedish women's fertility behaviour and labour force participation over a period of some 20 years ending in 1992/93. Two questions are examined: what is the relationship between working life and childbearing of two-child mothers? Are there differences in fertility between cohabiting and married couples? Several paths to the third child are identified, one of women with a university education and another of women with preference for more children, reflected by marriage after having the first or the second child or by persistent working experience followed by household work.     

Deliberate Birth Spacing in Nineteenth Century Northern Sweden

Fertility in nineteenth century Europe before the fertility transition has been described as high, unregulated, and stable; the extent of fertility control remains a controversial topic. The aim of this study is to determine whether there is evidence of deliberate birth spacing in northern Sweden prior to the onset of the fertility transition. This study analyses micro-level parish records of 9,636 women in nineteenth century northern Sweden??a remote but, at the time, economically dynamic frontier region of Sweden. Event history analysis reveals evidence of birth spacing that suggests some conscious birth control. Piecewise exponential models of the transition from second to third birth reveal circumstances in which parents increased or decreased the time to next birth. The results on the survival of previous children, geographic context, sex of previous children, and variations in grain prices all indicate that parents deliberately manipulated the spacing between births.     

Economic Growth or Survival? The Problematic Case of Child Mortality in Turkey

Turkey is a country which is demographically unclassifiable because its persistently high infant mortality is out of line with its socio-economic indicators and its low fertility. The rapid modernisation of Turkey over the last three decades, which might have been expected to have had a favourable effect upon infant survival, has not in this respect lived up to expectation. The stresses resulting from economic growth and the high level of female workforce participation have perhaps tended to distract women from child care. Also, neither Ottoman nor republican Turkish traditions have encouraged an enhancement of the status of childhood.Unconventional sources: ethnology, literature, cinema, are deployed here to construct an impression of the cultural environment of the mothers, fathers and families of dead children. Change of attitudes, very slow as far as childhood is concerned, have not yet caught up with the transition in fertility. An infant mortality rate of 53 per 1000, accompanying a total fertility rate scarcely higher than 2, is a combination difficult to find anywhere else.     

生育意愿的代际差异分析 ———以江苏省为例

利用江苏省"生育意愿和生育行为研究"调查数据,文章从意愿生育子女数、意愿子女性别、意愿生育年龄等三个维度出发,考察了不同代际(60后、70后、80后)育龄妇女生育意愿和生育观念的差异.研究发现,80年代出生的育龄妇女少生、晚生、优生的意愿趋势明显,以孩子为中心的观念也在弱化,性别选择更趋向无偏好化.新型生育文化及观念在我国发达的农村地区已成现实,这些事实对生育政策的调整具有重要参考意义.     

Native and Migrant Fertility Patterns in Greece: A Cohort Approach

This article examines fertility patterns and differentials between native women, and Albanian and Bulgarian immigrants, using data from the 2001 census of Greece on the reported numbers of children ever-born alive by citizenship. The analysis focuses on changing fertility timing and quantum of women born between 1950 and 1970, and reveals that cohort fertility is highest among Albanians and lowest among Bulgarians, while levels for native women are somewhere in between. Completed cohort fertility is decreasing over time for all nationalities, while the gap observed among the ethnic groups has been narrowing. Evidence based on the 2001 censuses of Albania and Bulgaria indicates that immigrants in Greece constitute, to some extent, selected groups, compared to the inhabitants of their countries of origin.     

Racing Against the Biological Clock? Childbearing and Sterility Among Men and Women in Second Unions in France

In developed countries, rising rates of union disruption have induced an increase in the share of people experiencing several fertile partnerships during their fertile life-span. However, from the large-scale 1999 French Family Survey, in the 1939–1954 birth cohorts it appears that completed fertility of repartnered men is slightly higher than that of never-separated men while repartnered women have fertility levels similar to those who remain in a first intact partnership. Following this observation, this article aims to study whether people, and especially women, have enough time to have children in the context of second union before they become limited by the “biological clock”. Using a cure model, we find that once age-related sterility is controlled for, the decrease in risk of having children with age is not visible anymore up to age 40. This offers some evidence that people in their second partnership, especially women, are constrained in their childbearing by the decline in fecundity with age. Additionally, childless women seem to respond proactively to the decline in fecundity with age by accelerating childbearing.     

Religion, Religiousness and Fertility in the US and in Europe

This article aims to assess the role of religion and religiousness in engendering higher US fertility compared to Europe. Religion is important in the life of one-half of US women, whereas not even for one of six Europeans. By every available measure, American women are more religious than European women. Catholic and Protestant women have notably higher fertility than those not belonging to any denomination in the US and across Europe. In all European regions and in the United States as well as among all denominations the more devout have more children. However, women in Northern and Western Europe who are the least religious have equivalent or even higher fertility than women in the US, and notably higher fertility than those in Southern Europe. This suggests that forces other than religion and religiousness are also important in their impact on childbearing. A multivariate analysis demonstrates that relatively “traditional” socio-economic covariates (age, marital status, residence, education, and income) do not substantially change the positive association of religiousness and fertility. Finally, if Europeans were as religious as Americans one might theoretically expect a small fertility increase for Europe as a whole, but considerably more for Western Europe.     

The Impact of Labour-Force Participation on Childbearing Behaviour: Pro-Cyclical Fertility in Sweden during the 1980s and the 1990s

During the last two decades, Sweden has experienced strong fluctuations both in its economy and in its level of childbearing. A period of high employment and increasing fertility has been followed by a period of lower employment and decreasing fertility since the beginning of the 1990s. In this paper, we use register data for Swedish women in order to examine how various types of attachment to the labour market affect women's propensity to give birth at different parities. Specifically, we show what impact changes in women's employment status have had on recorded fertility trends in Sweden. We find that women who have relatively low levels of income and women who are enrolled as students generally have lower fertility than other women. We also find that a rise in the number of women with such characteristics can explain part of the decrease in fertility during the 1990s. It is evident, however, that other factors, working at the macro level, also have to be considered when one wants to explain the fluctuating fertility of Sweden. Social policy is one such factor. In sum, we find a pattern of pro-cyclical fertility, where levels of female earnings are positively related to levels of childbearing.     

Modelling the fertility-employment relationship: Simultaneity and misspecification testing

The relationship between fertility and the employment of women is examined in the framework of micro-economic fertility analysis. Sociological considerations enter through the assumption that the shape of the utility function is influenced by women's sex role attitudes. An equilibrium assumption leads to a simultaneous three-equation model, which is estimated from a sample of 1303 married women living in the Greater Athens Area. Misspecification testing, however, revealed the presence of significant heteroscedasticity in the two demand equations for employment and number of children. A final model consisting of three structural and two variance equations was estimated. The main finding of the analysis is that of a significant causal influence of employment on fertility, both directly and through sex role attitudes. Fertility does not appear to have any significant effect on employment. The model is used to make some policy recommendations.

     

The Impact of Subjective Work Control, Job Strain and Work?CFamily Conflict on Fertility Intentions: a European Comparison

The link between employment and fertility is often only examined by focussing on women's labour market status or the impact of part- versus full-time employment. This study introduces a new explanation by extending research to examine how women's subjective perceptions of control or autonomy over work, job strain and work-family conflict influence fertility intentions. National-level measures of childcare enrolment under the age of three and the occurrence of part-time work are also included to examine their relation to fertility intentions and their interplay with perceptions of work. Using data from 23 countries from the 2004/5 European Social Survey (ESS), multilevel logistic regression models of fertility intentions are estimated separately for women without children and women with one child. Women with higher levels of work control are significantly more likely to intend to have a second child. Higher levels of job strain (time pressure) significantly lower fertility intentions for mothers in contexts where childcare availability is low. The prevalence of part-time work amongst the female work force significantly predicts the intention to become a mother but has different effects for women who work part-time themselves compared with full-time employees.     

影响生育的国外家庭政策分析

利用联合国公开发表的资料以及英国、加拿大和日本相关部门的官网信息．就低生育水平对不同国家家庭政策的影响以及有关国家对生育水平具有隐性或显性作用的家庭政策进行了分析。研究结果表明,低生育水平是有关国家态度转变的依据,态度的转变也带来了政策上的相应变化。三个国家的家庭政策具有明显的增强家庭养育子女经济实力、提升家庭照料子女能力以及促进家庭自身良性发展的作用。     

Marital and Reproductive Behavior in Italy After 1995: Bridging the Gap with Western Europe?

Despite a delay of 20–25 years, when it comes to cohabitation, Italy has now begun to resemble other Western countries. In addition, the increase in legal separations has accelerated since 1995, although their number still remains far from that observed in countries such as the USA, the UK, and France. Finally, Italy’s fertility decline has come to a halt: the cohort of women born in the early 1970s will likely have the same TFR as those born in the mid-1960s (around 1.55). Moreover, in the Centre–North areas, period TFR rose from 1.1 in 1995 to 1.35 children per woman 10 years later. The territorial diffusion of cohabitation, legal separation, out-of-wedlock births, and fertility recovery overlaps closely with that of the decline in births during the first half of the twentieth century. A similar geographical pattern has been observed for the diffusion of school enrolment, industrialization, secularization, and (during the last 20 years) foreign immigration.     

Female labour force participation,fertility and public policy in Sweden

This paper analyzes the role of public policy for Sweden's combination of high female labour force participation and high levels of fertility in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We present the central elements in the tax and family policies and use a disaggregated approach to assess their impact on Swedish fertility and female labour force participation. We show that these policies stimulate both fertility and women's paid work by reducing the costs of having children while requiring parents to be employed to collect full benefits.     

The dual strategy: Motherhood and the work contract in Scandinavia

Mothers' employment in the Scandinavian countries is generally characterised by high employment rates. At the same time the fertility level is higher than in most European countries. Scandinavian women have to a large extent developed a dual strategy towards employment and children: Most women choose to have at least two children and they continue their employment after and between births. In this paper we discuss how this dual strategy can be explained, taking the case of Norway. We argue that the strategy of Norwegian mothers is based on arrangements in working life which enable employed mothers to pursue motherhood within the work contract.