TY  - JOUR
A1  - Dahlberg, Johan
T1  - Family influence in fertility: A longitudinal analysis of sibling correlations in first birth risk and completed fertility among Swedish men and women
Y1  - 2013/08/13
JF  - Demographic Research
JO  - Demographic Research
SN  - 1435-9871
SP  - 233
EP  - 246
DO  - 10.4054/DemRes.2013.29.9
VL  - 29
IS  - 9
UR  - https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol29/9/
L1  - https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol29/9/29-9.pdf
L2  - https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol29/9/29-9.pdf
N2  - Background: The intergenerational transmission of fertility has received much attention in demography. This has been done by estimating the correlation between parents’ and offsprings’ fertility. An alternative method that provides a more comprehensive account of the role of family background - sibling correlations - has not been used before. 

Objective: I estimate the overall importance of family background on entry into parenthood and completed fertility and whether it changed over time. Furthermore, I compare the intergenerational correlation in completed fertility with corresponding sibling correlations. 

Methods: Brother and sister correlations in first birth hazard and in final family size were estimated using multi-level event-history and multi-level linear regression on Swedish longitudinal register data. 

Results: The overall variation in fertility that can be explained by family of origin is approximately 15%-25% for women and 10%-15% for men. The overall importance of the family of origin has not changed over the approximately twenty birth cohorts that were studied (1940-63 for women, 1940-58 for men). Parents’ completed fertility accounts for only a small share of the total family background effect on completed fertility. 

Conclusions: This study contributes to the existing understanding of intergenerational transition of fertility, both methodologically, by introducing a new and powerful method to study the overall importance of family of origin, and substantially, by estimating the overall importance of family of origin and ist development over time. A non-negligible proportion of the variation in fertility can be attributed to family of origin and this effect has remained stable over twenty birth cohorts. 

ER  -