BACKGROUND: Fertility research has highlighted the importance of analyzing both partners’ characteristics as determinants of fertility behavior, especially when examining the role of socioeconomic resources. However, due to a lack of adequate data, couple-level fertility research is relatively scarce. OBJECTIVE: We examined the role of educational pairings in different-sex couples for the occurrence and timing of second births in Austria, with a focus on the role of partners’ income. METHODS: We used register data from the period 2000–2021, and we applied a cure model to differentiate between factors associated with the occurrence and timing of second births. RESULTS: Homogamous couples with at least medium education are more likely to have a second child relative to their lower-educated counterparts. Medium-educated couples have longer birth intervals relative to both lower- and tertiary-educated couples. Results did not change when controlling for partners’ joint income. When we controlled for relative income in the medium–tertiary combination, hypogamous (the woman more educated than the man) couples were more likely to have a second child than their hypergamous (the man more educated than the woman) counterparts. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight that the economic dimension of education, as captured by partners’ joint and relative income, is not sufficient to explain differences between educational pairings in the occurrence and timing of second births in Austria. CONTRIBUTION: We examined whether the association between couples’ educational pairing and the occurrence and timing of second births is accounted for by partners’ joint or relative income. Moreover, we used register data, allowing for precise measures of educational pairings and partners’ earnings.
BACKGROUND: On July 1, 2017, Estonia introduced a substantial child allowance for families with three or more children, supplementing regular child benefits. This universal, non-means-tested benefit aimed to alleviate financial burdens for larger families and encourage third and higher-order births. OBJECTIVE: We examine the impact of this reform on the likelihood and timing of third births. We hypothesise that the Estonian child benefit reform had a positive impact, given that the total allowances for a family with three children amounted to 41% of the average salary at the time of implementation. METHODS: We analyse longitudinal register data using a mixture cure model embedded within a difference-in-differences framework, which allows us to distinguish between changes in the probability of having a third child and changes in the timing of third births. RESULTS: We find evidence that the reform was associated with a shortening of the time to third birth by nearly a quarter and a 4 percentage point increase in the probability of a third birth, corresponding to an 11% rise relative to the baseline third birth probability (37%). CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that a generous child allowance can be linked to changes in both the timing and the likelihood of higher-order births. CONTRIBUTION: The study contributes to the broader literature analysing the effects of family benefits on fertility by providing new evidence from longitudinal register data on the association between a generous, universal child benefit and changes in the timing and likelihood of third births in a low fertility context.
BACKGROUND: This study projects family life courses of the descendants of immigrants in England and Wales using microsimulation. While previous projections have estimated the size of ethnic groups, this is the first study to examine how the family and age structures of the descendants of immigrants evolve across generations and over time. OBJECTIVE: Our aim is to explore how the future age, partnership, and parity distributions of immigrant descendant populations develop in the United Kingdom. METHODS: We develop a microsimulation model of fertility and partnership transitions from ages 20–49, using partnership formation, dissolution, and fertility rates from previous research. We construct a base population using data from the 2011 Census. RESULTS: The results show, first, significant heterogeneity in partnership and fertility patterns among migrant populations. Second, this heterogeneity is reduced among the descendants of immigrants, especially for fertility levels. Third, the distribution of the descendants of immigrants by partnership and parity gradually becomes similar to that of the native population. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows an increasing similarity in the family behaviour of majority and minority populations, and also that it may take a generation or two before the differences vanish. This study also demonstrates that microsimulation is a useful tool for projecting the life histories and family structures of the descendants of immigrants. CONTRIBUTION: This is the first study to project partnership and parity structure for the descendants of immigrants, improving our understanding of how migrant populations change across generations.
BACKGROUND: Urban–rural diffusion of family-building ideals, beliefs, and behaviors has long been hypothesized to drive fertility transitions. Though the idea is supported on the aggregate level, little prior research has addressed individual-level diffusion. Understanding such mechanisms may be especially important in the high-fertility context of sub-Saharan Africa. OBJECTIVE: We estimate the association of exposure of rural residents in a small Senegalese population to urban migrants and non-migrant urban residents in their social networks and their beliefs about ideal family size and the acceptability of contraceptive use. We address hypothesized mediating mechanisms and moderating effects of network density. METHODS: Data are drawn from the Niakhar Social Networks and Health Project, a large-scale social network survey, and the Niakhar Demographic and Health Surveillance System. Nested models are estimated with migrant exposure operationalized as both the proportion of migrants and the average duration of migration to the capital, Dakar, in respondents’ social networks. RESULTS: Contraceptive approval and numeric response to ideal family size are strongly associated with migrant exposure in men’s social networks but not women’s. This is explained by differences in network density and the prevalence of these ideals in networks. Migrant exposure is associated with lower ideal family sizes for both men and women. CONTRIBUTION: We find support for social learning and influence effects associated with exposure to migrants on key ideals and beliefs about family size and contraception use, and we find moderating effects of network density. Our findings have potentially important implications for family planning policy and programmatic efforts in the region.
BACKGROUND: Much attention has been paid recently to the large decline in period fertility in many countries since 2010. In the Nordic countries and England and Wales much of it can be attributed to the decline in first-birth rates, suggesting higher childlessness. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper is to quantify the contribution of childlessness to changes in cohort completed fertility between the 1960 and 1979 cohorts, for sixteen countries from Europe, East Asia, and North America. METHODS: Using Kitagawa exact decomposition, I decompose the changes in cohort completed fertility between two components: the proportion of women who remained childless up to the age of 45 (‘nulliparous’ women) and the average number of children born to women who became mothers by age 45 (‘parous’ women). The data primarily come from the Human Fertility Database. RESULTS: The contribution of childlessness to the change in fertility of the 1960–1979 cohorts is varied. In many countries a rise in childlessness made a large contribution to the decline in their cohort fertility (e.g., Japan, South Korea, Spain, and Poland), but in others its contribution is small. CONCLUSIONS: Increases in childlessness played a larger relative role in cohort fertility decline in countries which experienced large declines. CONTRIBUTION: This paper decomposes the changes in cohort fertility into two components, using a simple exact decomposition and more-recent birth cohorts than in Zeman et al. (2018), and ascertains conditions where the childlessness component was large.
