Preference Theory and Low Fertility: A Comparative Perspective

The discussion on the causes of the most recent fertility decline in Europe, and in particular on the emergence of lowest-low fertility, emphasizes the relevance of cultural factors in addition to economic ones. As part of such a cultural framework, the heterogeneity of preferences concerning the “career vs. family” dichotomy has been systematized in the “Preference Theory” approach developed by Catherine Hakim. This heterogeneity in preferences, however, has so far been underinvestigated in a comparative framework. This paper makes use of comparative data from the 2004/2005 Round of the European Social Survey to test the links between individual-level preferences and both fertility outcomes and fertility intentions, in a variety of societal settings. Results confirm an association between work–family lifestyle preferences and realized fertility in a variety of European countries, while they do not show a relationship between lifestyle preferences and fertility intentions. Results further support the existence of heterogeneous patterns of association between lifestyle preferences and fertility choices among welfare regimes.     

Demographic change and the supply of potential family supporters in Britain, Finland and France in the period 1911–2050/Changements démographiques et disponibilité des soutiens familiaux en Grande-Bretagne, en Finlande et en France entre 1911 et 2050

We consider the contribution of changes in mortality and fertility to availability of living mothers and living children among older people in Britain, Finland and France. The proportion of people aged around 60 with a mother alive will more than double between those born in 1911 and 1970 before starting to decline slightly. Conversely, a higher proportion of elderly people are likely to have a surviving child than for any generation ever born in all three countries in the next quarter century or so, with about 85% of 80-year-old women having at least one surviving child, and about two-thirds having two or more.     

Assessing Short-Term Fertility Intentions and Their Realisation Using the Generations and Gender Survey: Pitfalls and Challenges

The use of fertility intention questions to study individual childbearing behaviour has developed rapidly in recent decades. In Europe, the Generations and Gender Surveys are the main sources of cross-national data on fertility intentions and their realisation. This study investigates how an inconsistent implementation of a question about wanting a child now affects the cross-country comparability of intentions to have a child within the next three years and their realisation. We conduct our analysis separately for women and men at prime and late reproductive ages in Austria, France, Italy and Poland. The results show that the overall share of respondents intending to have a child at some point in their life is similar in all four analysed countries. However, once the time horizon and the degree of certainty of fertility intentions are included, substantial cross-country differences appear, particularly in terms of proceptive behaviour and, consequently, the realisation of fertility intentions. We conclude that the inconsistent questionnaire adaptation makes it very difficult to assess the role of country context in the realisation of childbearing intentions.     

Where Are the Babies? Labor Market Conditions and Fertility in Europe

Cross-country differences in both the age at first birth and fertility are substantial in Europe. This paper uses distinct fluctuations in unemployment rates across European countries during the 1980s and the 1990s combined with broad differences in their labor market arrangements to analyze the associations between fertility timing and the changing economic environment with close to 50,000 women from 13 European countries. First, it employs time-varying measures of aggregate market conditions in each woman??s country as covariates and second, it adds micro-measures of each woman??s labor market history to the models. High and persistent unemployment in a country is associated with delays in childbearing (and second births). The association is robust to diverse measures of unemployment and to controls for family-friendly policies. Besides moderate unemployment, a large public employment sector (which provides security and benefits) is coupled with faster transitions to all births. Women with temporary contracts, mostly in Southern Europe, are the least likely to give birth to a second child.     

Children’s Sex and the Happiness of Parents

Demographers are interested in sex preferences for children because they can skew sex ratios and influence population-level fertility, parenting behavior, and family outcomes. Based on parity progression ratios, in most European countries, there are no sex preferences for a first child, but a strong preference for mixed-sex children. We hypothesize that mixed-sex preferences also influence parental happiness. Parents’ disappointment with a second child of the same sex as the first could have negative effects for parents and children. We use longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Study to examine parental happiness by the children’s sex and analyze whether these effects differ by parent’s sex, age, nativity, and educational attainment. The results are only partially consistent with predictions from parity progression ratios. As expected, parental happiness does not depend on the sex of the first child. We find weak evidence suggesting that two boys decrease happiness, but the findings are not consistent across German and British data or across subpopulations. Moreover, two girls do not reduce happiness. Although sex preferences influence fertility, they appear to have little impact on happiness, perhaps because of unobserved positive factors associated with having same-sex children.     

Deferment of the First Birth and Fluctuating Fertility in Sweden

In Sweden, as in other industrialized countries, a decades-old decline in fertility rates has been accompanied by a rise in the age at first birth. In contrast to other industrialized countries, however, fertility rates rose sharply in the 1980s before plummeting in the 1990s. In this paper we apply hazard regression to data from the 1992 Swedish Family Survey, supplemented by annual earnings data linked to individuals and by annual time series of national-level economic indicators, to investigate the predictors of the timing of the first birth of women in Sweden since the mid-1960s. The discovery that both individual characteristics and aggregate-level factors influence the timing of the first birth casts light on both the continuing trend of postponement of the first birth and annual fluctuations in first-birth rates.     

Fertility Decline in Russia in the Early and Mid 1990s: The Role of Economic Uncertainty and Labour Market Crises

This paper analyses the fertility decline in Russia during theearly and mid 1990s from both a macro- and micro-perspective and presents astriking divergence between these two empirical viewpoints. While the formersuggests that the fertility decline after 1989 is associated with theeconomic hardship accompanying the transition to a market economy, themicro-evidence using the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey is to thecontrary. There is no negative association between labour market uncertaintyor a labour market crisis and fertility, and frequently there is even apositive association. That is, women or couples who are themselves affectedby labour market crises often had a higher probability of having anotherchild in the period 1994–1996 than women/couples who were less affected bysuch crises. The lack of a negative association, and the presence of apositive association in many instances, is surprising from the standpoint ofeconomic fertility theory. It is also contrary to many explanatory theoriesabout the recent fertility decline in Central and Eastern European countriesthat are built on a more or less direct connection between the labour marketor an economic crisis and low fertility.     

Child Survival and Fertility of Refugees in Rwanda

In the 1960s and 1990s, internal strife in Rwanda has caused a mass flow of refugees into neighbouring countries. This article explores the cumulated fertility of Rwandan refugee women and the survival of their children. To this end, we use a national survey conducted between 1999 and 2001 and covering 6,420 former refugee and non-refugee households. The findings support old-age security theories of reproductive behaviour: refugee women had higher fertility but their children had lower survival chances. Newborn girls suffered more than boys, suggesting that the usual sex differential in child survival observed in most populations changes under extreme living conditions.     

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.     

Deadline for Parenthood: Fertility Postponement and Age Norms in Poland

The postponement of childbearing is occurring across Europe, but the paths of this trend differ profoundly from country to country. In Poland, as in other Central and Eastern European countries, most women have their first child at a relatively young age. This article asks about the role of age norms in sustaining the pattern of early motherhood. We investigate young adults’ perceptions of age in relation to their fertility choices. We find that age is, indeed, a salient dimension that structures and regulates individual childbearing plans. The qualitative approach of our study allows for gaining insights into how age norms are explained, argued about and sanctioned. Finally, we reconstruct the mechanisms of the normative influence of age limits (deadlines) on fertility behaviour, improving our understanding of the timing of childbearing.     

Analysis of Latin American Fertility in Terms of Probable Social Classes

Theories of demographic change have not paid enough attention to how factors associated with fertility decline play different roles across social classes that are defined multidimensionally. I use a multidimensional definition of social class along with information on the reproductive histories of women born between 1920 and 1965 in six Latin American countries to show the following: the enduring connection between social stratification and fertility differentials, the concomitance of diverse fertility decline trajectories by class, and the role of within- and between-class social distances in promoting/preventing ideational change towards the acceptance of lower fertility. These results enable me to revisit the scope of theories of fertility change and to provide an explanatory narrative centred on empirically constructed social classes (probable social classes) and the macro- and micro-level conditions that influenced their life courses. I use 21 census samples collected between 1970 and 2005 in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Paraguay.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Couples’ First Child Intentions and Disagreement: An Analysis of the Italian Case

The aim of this article is to examine the determinants of couples’ childbearing intentions, by explicitly taking into account the agreement or disagreement of the two members of the couple. The relevance of the partner’s reproductive intentions has been well recognised in the literature, but few studies have provided in-depth analyses of the fertility plans of both partners. In our study, we used the household-level data from a survey on “Family and Social Subjects”, carried out by the Italian National Statistical Office in 2003, which provides characteristics on both partners. We adopted a couple’s perspective which allows us to give a unitary picture of the concordant or discordant nature of partners’ first child intentions. We found that a lack of agreement in the reproductive decision-making process is likely to occur in the Italian couples where the role of the woman is less traditional. In particular, cohabitant, highly educated and working women are more likely to be in disagreement with their partners in the decisions concerning having a first child. Being religious may be also a source of discordance in the couples’ reproductive plans. Our findings support the utility of taking a couple-based approach in studies on fertility intentions.     

Didn’t Plan One but got One: Unintended and sooner-than-intended Parents in the East and the West of Europe

The realisation rates of short-term childbearing intentions are known to be consistently lower in post-socialist countries than in the rest of Europe. However, the East–West differences in the outcomes of intentions to postpone or forego (further) childbearing have not been previously examined. We employ two panel waves of the Generations and Gender Survey in six countries (three from Eastern and three from Western Europe), and, based on the short- and long-term fertility intentions expressed by respondents at the first survey wave, we classify the births occurring between two waves as intended, sooner-than-intended, or unintended. We find that in our study population of non-teenage respondents who had the same partner at both survey waves and a child between the two survey waves, between around 10% (Western European countries) and 30% (Eastern European countries) experienced an unintended or a sooner-than-intended birth. The East–West divide is largely driven by the share of unintended parents which is clearly higher in the post-socialist countries. However, the geographical pattern fades away once we control for the anticipated costs of having a child. Our study gives insight into East–West differences in attitudes to childbearing and into how they affect reproductive behaviour. It also offers methodological improvements of cross-national panel surveys designed to examine childbearing intentions that would allow for a more accurate assessment of childbearing intendedness.     

Value changes and the dimensions of familism in the European community

It is argued in this article that family formation is conditioned not only by economic factors (more particularly, opportunity structures), but also by ideational changes: the economic factors produce period fluctuations that are superimposed on long-term (and often cohort-driven) ideational effects. Value orientations are explored and compared across countries and across age groups using the internationally-comparable data sets provided by the European Values Studies. The analysis indicates the existence of two latent dimensions with respect to familism: tolerance of non-conformism in family formation, and the meaning attached to parenthood. These two dimensions are not completely distinct from each other though, and both are related to religious and political variables (religiosity, ‘post-materialism’, nationalism, leftism, etc.). Theoretical links are made both with Easterlin's hypothesis which implies fluctuating fertility levels and with Simon's thesis concerning the importance of ‘civil religion’ in supporting fertility. The results are, however, largely in line with Ariès' thesis of two successive and quite distinct fertility transitions in the West, and suggest that fertility is very likely to remain at below-replacement levels.     

Women in prison: A comparative assessment

This article examines women prisoners as a percent of the prison populations of twentysix countries. In this study, we hypothesize that in countries where women have greater social, educational, and economic advancements, women will also comprise the larger percentages of the total prison population. Findings from this study indicate that the countries where women constitute the highest percentages of the prison population are also those where women have high literacy rates. The percent of certain crimes committed by women correlates significantly and positively with educational and economic indicators, as well as measures of women's advancements in the workforce. Negative and significant correlations are seen between fertility rates and the number of women as a percent of the prison population, as well as educational variables. Ultimately, the findings indicate that in countries where women have advanced the greatest with regards to education, labor, and social status, the percent of women in the prison population and of all offenders for certain crime categories is also higher.