We study the aggregate gap between intended and actual fertility in 19 European
countries and the US based on a cohort approach. This complements prior research
that had mainly used a period approach. We compare the mean intended number
of children among young women aged 20 to 24 (born in the early 1970s), meas
ured during the 1990s in the Fertility and Family Surveys, with data on completed
fertility in the same cohorts around age 40. In a similar manner, we compare the
share who state that they do not want a child with actual cohort childlessness. Our
exploration is informed by the cognitive-social model of fertility intentions devel-
oped by Bachrach and Morgan (Popul Dev Rev 39(3):459-485, 2013). In all coun-
tries, women eventually had, on average, fewer children than the earlier expectations
in their birth cohort, and more often than intended, they remained childless. The
results reveal distinct regional patterns, which are most apparent for childlessness.
The gap between intended and actual childlessness is widest in the Southern Euro-
pean and the German-speaking countries and smallest in the Central and Eastern
European countries. Additionally, we analyze the aggregate intentions-fertility gap
among women with different levels of education. The gap is largest among highly
educated women in most countries studied and the educational gradient varies by
region, most distinctively for childlessness. Differences between countries suggest
that contextual factors-norms about parenthood, work-family policies, unemployment-shape women's fertility goals, total family size, and the gap between them.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VIENNA/oai:epub.wu-wien.ac.at:6852 |
| Date | 25 February 2019 |
| Creators | Beaujouan, Eva, Berghammer, Caroline |
| Publisher | Springer |
| Source Sets | Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, PeerReviewed, info:eu-repo/semantics/article |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11113-019-09516-3, https://www.springer.com/, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3072-4336, http://epub.wu.ac.at/6852/, info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/EURREP/284238 |
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