Are daughters' childbearing intentions related to their mothers' socio-economic status?

Testa, Maria Rita and Bordone, Valeria and Osiewalska, Beata and Skirbekk, Vegard (2016) Are daughters' childbearing intentions related to their mothers' socio-economic status? Demographic Research, 35 (21). pp. 581-616. ISSN 1435-9871

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Abstract

BACKGROUND Unlike actual fertility, fertility intentions are often found to be positively correlated with education. The literature explaining this paradox is scarce. OBJECTIVE We aim to fill the gap in the existing scientific literature by searching for the main factors that influence highly educated women to plan a larger family size. METHODS Using the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey for four countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, and Norway), we analyse the relationship between mother's socio-economic status and daughter's fertility intentions, controlling for daughter's socio-economic status and sibship size. Zero-inflated Poisson regression models are employed to estimate the predictors of women's additionally intended number of children. RESULTS We find that the effect of family of origin is exerted mainly through sibship size among childless daughters: Daughters with more siblings intend to have more children. After the transition to parenthood, the effect of family of origin is exerted mainly through the mother's level of education: Daughters with highly educated mothers intend to have more children. CONCLUSIONS The empirical results suggest that the positive link between births intentions and level of education might not merely be an artefact generated by the design of cross-sectional surveys but the outcome of a better socio-economic status that allows forming positive reproductive plans. CONTRIBUTION The positive role of mother's socio-economic status on daughter's fertility decision-making offers a valuable interpretation of the positive link between education and fertility intentions which goes beyond the alternative explanations referring to self-selection, partner effect, or time squeeze, and needs to be confirmed by further research. (authors' abstract)

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This open-access work is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 2.0 Germany, which permits use, reproduction & distribution in any medium for non-commercial purposes, provided the original author(s) and source are given credit. See http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/de/
Divisions:	Departments > Sozioökonomie > Sozialpolitik > Demographie
Version of the Document:	Published
Variance from Published Version:	None
Depositing User:	Maria Rita Testa
Date Deposited:	08 Mar 2018 12:34
Last Modified:	08 Mar 2018 14:47
Related URLs:	http://www.demographic-research.org/info... Publisher http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-n...
FIDES Link:	https://bach.wu.ac.at/d/research/results/78458/
URI:	https://epub.wu.ac.at/id/eprint/6110

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• Are daughters' childbearing intentions related to their mothers' socio-economic status? (deposited 15 Sep 2016 12:02)
  • Are daughters' childbearing intentions related to their mothers' socio-economic status? (deposited 08 Mar 2018 12:34) [Currently Displayed]

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