January 12, 2016 | News | Suessmilch Lecture

Expected and Unexpected Effects of Childbearing

On January 19, 2016 Øystein Kravdal from the University of Oslo, Norway will give a talk about the methodologically and politically important distinction of expected and unexpected effects of childbearing at the MPIDR.

The consequences of childbearing are partly expected by the parents, but there is obviously also much that can happen that is very difficult or impossible to foresee.  It is argued in this paper that unexpected effects constitute a potential welfare loss for the families: If people knew more about how childbearing would affect their lives, and how their children would be influenced by the number of siblings, they could make fertility decisions serving their own and their children’s interest better. Welfare improvements could therefore, in theory, be achieved by disseminating existing expert knowledge about effects of childbearing, and by doing research to learn more about such effects and whether they deviate from what people tend to expect. Admittedly, this is no easy task, and even if a gap between actual and expected consequences is somehow identified, it is not necessarily so large that it matters much. If it does matter, however, it would be more reasonable to say that there is a “low-fertility problem” also at the family level, and not only at the macro-level. Looking at the other side of the coin, if effects of childbearing to a large extent are expected, vary between individuals and are taken into account in the fertility decisions, there are large problems involved in the estimation. Researchers should be aware of these problems, and it is an obvious goal to learn more about their magnitude, so that subjects where the problems are most pronounced can be avoided and findings interpreted as cautiously as needed. Also, attempts to develop methods mitigating these problems should, of course, be welcome.

About the presenter
Øystein Kravdal has been Professor of Demography at the University of Oslo (Department of Economics) since 1994. His main research interests are socioeconomic determinants of fertility/family behaviour and associations between all these factors and health/ mortality. Most of his work has been based on event history analysis of Norwegian register data or DHS surveys from Africa or India.

Time and Venue
Tuesday, January 19, 4 p.m., in the Institute's Auditorium