Volume 51 - Article 26 | Pages 809–822  

Higher incomes are increasingly associated with higher fertility: Evidence from the Netherlands, 2008–2022

By Daniël van Wijk

Abstract

Background: The relationship between income and fertility appears to be changing across rich societies at the national and regional levels. However, less is known about how the individual-level relationship between income and fertility has changed over time.

Objective: To examine how the relationship between income and fertility changed between 2008 and 2022 in the Netherlands, and how this trend differs by gender and parity.

Methods: Using register data on the full population, I link income quintiles in year t–2 to births in year t. Separate logistic regression models are estimated for each gender and year.

Results: Over the 2008–2022 period, income became increasingly positively associated with fertility. Although income effects are stronger for men than for women, the intensifying of the income effect over time is evident for both genders. These results are driven by first births. For higher-order births, income effects are much weaker and did not change over the study period.

Conclusions: Earning a high income constitutes an increasingly strong prerequisite for the transition to parenthood in the Netherlands. This likely contributes to the postponement of parenthood and the decline of fertility and suggests that low-income groups may increasingly be unable to fulfill their fertility desires.

Contribution: This study adds to a small number of studies that have shown that the individual-level relationship between income and fertility has become more positive over the past decades in rich societies, and it shows that this trend is driven by first rather than higher-order births.

Author’s Affiliation

• Daniël van Wijk - Nederlands Interdisciplinair Demografisch Instituut (NIDI), the Netherlands EMAIL

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

Reassessing the U-shaped relationship between gender equality and fertility: A replication and extension of Kolk’s (2019) study using comprehensive gender equality measures
Volume 53 - Article 29    | Keywords: fertility, gender, gender equality, human development, Human Fertility Database (HFD)

Early unintended childbearing and unsecured debt in the United States
Volume 53 - Article 27    | Keywords: demography, fertility, gender, life course, mothers

Neighbors’ social attitudes predict variations in live births among the Amish of Holmes County, Ohio, United States
Volume 53 - Article 25    | Keywords: Amish, diffusion, fertility, household, proximity, religion, spatial analysis

The role of parenthood and gender in shaping circulation patterns of Ukrainian migration to Poland
Volume 53 - Article 23    | Keywords: circular migration, gender, migration, mobility patterns, parenthood, Poland, Ukraine

Analysing migrant fertility using machine learning techniques: An application of random survival forest to longitudinal data from France
Volume 53 - Article 21    | Keywords: fertility, immigrants, machine learning, random survival forest, survival analysis