Volume 37 - Article 12 | Pages 325–362  

Childlessness and fertility by couples' educational gender (in)equality in Austria, Bulgaria, and France

By Beata Osiewalska

Abstract

Background: In modern, highly developed countries the association between education and fertility seems to be equivocal: A negative influence of education mainly applies to women, while among men the correlation is often positive or negligible. Although the gender differences have been examined in depth, couples’ procreative behaviour treated as the result of a conflict between male and female characteristics is still understudied.

Objective: This study aims to investigate couples’ reproductive behaviour among contemporary European populations with regard to (in)equality between partners’ educational levels and the joint educational resources of a couple. Various measures of educational endogamy are considered.

Methods: The hurdle zero-truncated Poisson model within the Bayesian framework is applied. The data comes from the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey for Austria, Bulgaria, and France.

Results: Homogamous low-educated partners have, on average, the highest fertility. The highly educated postpone childbearing and have a smaller number of children in all countries except France, where their completed fertility does not differ from that of other unions. The effect of hypergamy is insignificant and is thus similar to homogamy in medium education. Hypogamy negatively influences fertility in Bulgaria and Austria, while in France the effect is insignificant.

Conclusions: The small variation in fertility due to couple-level education observed in France indicates that proper institutional support for families might help couples overcome possible obstacles and enhance fertility for all educational profiles.

Contribution: This study provides a perspective on the relationship between reproductive behaviour and educational pairing in varying country-specific contexts. It reaches key conclusions on contemporary fertility regarding both childlessness and parenthood and their association with couples’ different educational profiles.

Author's Affiliation

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Partners’ empowerment and fertility in ten European countries
Volume 38 - Article 49

Are daughters’ childbearing intentions related to their mothers’ socio-economic status?
Volume 35 - Article 21

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

Developing and implementing the UN's probabilistic population projections as a milestone for Bayesian demography: An interview with Adrian Raftery
Volume 51 - Article 1    | Keywords: Bayesian demography, interview, methods development, UN population projections

Incorporating subjective survival information in mortality and change in health status predictions: A Bayesian approach
Volume 50 - Article 36    | Keywords: Bayesian demography, health, mortality, self report, subjective mortality probabilities

Are highly educated partners really more gender egalitarian? A couple-level analysis of social class differentials in attitudes and behaviors
Volume 50 - Article 34    | Keywords: attitudes, couple analysis, education, educational level, gender, gender roles, housework, social class differentials

The importance of education for understanding variability of dementia onset in the United States
Volume 50 - Article 26    | Keywords: dementia, education, lifespan variability, modal age, morbidity compression

Housework time and task segregation: Revisiting gender inequality among parents in 15 European countries
Volume 50 - Article 19    | Keywords: cross-national comparison, gender, housework

Cited References: 58

Download to Citation Manager

PubMed

Google Scholar

Volume
Page
Volume
Article ID