Abstract
Previous studies identified large differences between countries in the extent to which childbearing intentions are realised. Failure to realise an intention to become a parent was found to be particularly common in the post-socialist countries. In this paper we examine whether similarly low rates of realisation of fertility intentions can be found in Poland. We use two waves of the Polish Generations and Gender Survey (GGS-PL), conducted in 2010/2011 and 2014/2015. We first describe fertility intentions of Polish women and men as declared at the survey’s first wave. Next, we examine whether the short-term childbearing intentions expressed at wave 1 were followed by an actual birth by the second round of the data collection. For the respondents who did not get a child between waves 1 and 2, we analyse the stability of their fertility plans. We find that approximately 35% of the respondents who at wave 1 intended to have a child in the next three years actually had one by wave 2. Both realization and stability of fertility intentions varied markedly by gender and parity.
Highlights
The increasing availability of effective contraception enables couples to gain more and more control over their fertility, the childbearing decisions remain “imperfect” (Mencarini et al, 2015: 14)
In the European context, the most recent, cross-nationally comparative data on childbearing intentions and their realisation originate from the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) (Vikat et al, 2007)
The realisation rates vary from 22% in Bulgaria, through around 30% in Georgia and Hungary to over 40% in France and Germany (Spéder and Kapitány, 2014); in Norway, where the data on childbearing behaviour were retrieved from administrative registers, they reached almost 60% (Dommermuth et al, 2015)
Summary
The increasing availability of effective contraception enables couples to gain more and more control over their fertility, the childbearing decisions remain “imperfect” (Mencarini et al, 2015: 14). The respondents were asked the same question about their shortterm fertility intentions: Do you intend to have a/another child in the three years? Those who gave a negative answer (probably not or definitely not), were asked a second question, about their long-term fertility intentions: Supposing you do not have a/another child during the three years, do you intend to have any (more) children at all?
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