Abstract
This study examines fertility variation by residential context in Britain. While there is a large literature on fertility trends and determinants in industrialised countries, to date longitudinal research on spatial fertility variation has been restricted to the Nordic countries. We study fertility variation across regions of different sizes, and within urban regions by distinguishing between central cities and suburbs. We use vital statistics and longitudinal data and apply event history analysis. We investigate the extent to which the socio-economic characteristics of couples and selective migrations explain fertility variation between residential contexts, and the extent to which contextual factors potentially play a role. Our analysis shows that fertility levels decline as the size of an urban area increases; within urban regions suburbs have significantly higher fertility levels than city centres. Differences in fertility by residential context persist when we control for the effect of population composition and selective migrations.
Highlights
There is a growing body of literature on spatial aspects of fertility and their importance for understanding fertility patterns and dynamics in industrialised countries
We examined fertility variation by residential context in Britain
Our analysis of vital statistics showed that the total fertility declined as the size of an urban area increased; within urban regions suburbs had significantly higher fertility levels than the city centres
Summary
There is a growing body of literature on spatial aspects of fertility and their importance for understanding fertility patterns and dynamics in industrialised countries. Fertility levels are high in rural areas and small towns and low in large cities. This pattern has been observed for the US (Glusker, Dobie, Madigan, Rosenblatt, & Larson, 2000; Heaton, Lichter, & Amoateng, 1989), England and Wales (Boyle, Graham, & Feng, 2007; Tromans, Natamba, & Jefferies, 2009), France While studies on urban–rural fertility variation show broadly similar patterns (the larger the settlement, the lower the fertility levels), it is far from clear why fertility levels are higher in smaller places and lower in larger settlements. The compositional hypothesis suggests that fertility levels vary between places because different people live in different settlements, whereas the contextual hypothesis suggests that factors related to immediate living environment are of critical importance. The role of selective migrations has been discussed in the literature; couples with childbearing intentions may decide to move to smaller places that are better suited to childrearing, whereas those
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