Eine Mehrebenenanalyse regionaler Einflüsse auf die Familiengründung westdeutscher Frauen in den Jahren 1984 bis 1999

The role of regional influences at district level in the process of family formation is investigated for West-German women during the 1980s and 1990s. As a theoretical framework we suggest a multilevel model of sociological explanation. The empirical analysis of transition to first marriage and to the first and second child is based on micro-data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). The estimated discrete-time multilevel logit models suggest, first, that basically all regional heterogeneity in women’s fertility behavior is due to differences in the respondents’ individual characteristics — particularly marital status and age — while, secondly, there is a significant regional variation in women’s marital behavior, which cannot be explained by population composition or by structural contextual effects. Thus, regional influences on fertility decisions do not have an autonomous quality, but are merely mediated through a latent contextual effect on the risk of entering first marriage, which we attribute to regional socio-cultural milieus.