MPIDR Working Paper
Becoming a parent in East Germany during the 1990s. The impact of personal considerations on the timing of entry to parenthood
MPIDR Working Paper WP-2005-008, 38 pages (March 2005).
Rostock, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
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Keywords: Germany (Neue Bundesländer), fertility determinants, sex differentials, social psychology
Abstract
This paper deals with psychological determinants of fertility differentials in East Germany in the 1990s. We test the explanatory and statistical power of psychological covariates in an event-history model of first-birth intensities together with other covariates. We show that different psychological covariates (wishes and fears, coping-styles, etc.) are important determinants of the transition to parenthood. A crucial finding is the existence of strong sex differentials in such impacts.