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

• Beata Osiewalska - Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny w Krakowie, Poland EMAIL

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

Attitudes toward child well-being in diverse families across Europe
Volume 53 - Article 11    | Keywords: attitudes, children, Europe, European Social Survey, family, gender, same-sex couples, single parenthood, stepfamily

The partnership, fertility, and employment trajectories of immigrants in the United Kingdom: An intersectional life course approach using three-channel sequence analysis
Volume 53 - Article 10    | Keywords: employment, fertility, immigrants, multi-channel sequence analysis, partnership, United Kingdom

Where do we go from here? Partnership-parenthood trajectories of cohabitation as first union during young adulthood in the United States
Volume 53 - Article 9    | Keywords: cohabitation, family inequality, fertility, marriage, race/ethnicity, transition to adulthood, union formation, United States of America

Education, religion, and male fertility in sub-Saharan Africa: A descriptive analysis
Volume 53 - Article 8    | Keywords: education, male fertility, polygyny, religion, sub-Saharan Africa

Fertility differences across immigrant generations in the United Kingdom
Volume 52 - Article 33    | Keywords: event history analysis, fertility, immigrant, second generation, United Kingdom