Book Chapter
Gender and the differential fertility
Pinnelli, A., Di Giulio, P.
In: Pinnelli, A., Racioppi, F., Rettaroli, R. (Eds.): Genders in the life course: demographic issues, 113–134
The Springer series on demographic methods and population analysis 19
Dordrecht, Springer (2007)
ISBN 978-1-4020-6001-4
Abstract
Studies of differential fertility use the characteristics of the women or a mix of the characteristics of the woman and her partner as possible influencing factors, but they rarely consider the characteristics of men. The opportunity to use women, men, or couples´ characteristics to explain fertility behavior has not been seriously discussed until now. However, changing gender roles make it necessary to reconsider such factors. We use the Fertility and Family Survey data and apply event history analysis (a mixture model) of the probability of having a child. We chose counries with different institutional arrangements for the two genders. The results show that partners who have similar socio-economic and demographic characteristics (age, education, religiosity) have a higher probability to have children. Moreover we confirm that a family-friendly context increases the fertility of higher educated and working women.
Keywords: France, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, event history analysis, fertility determinants, gender