Abstract
Given the many linkages between education and family behaviour, the expansion of higher education especially among women in recent decades may have important consequences for fertility in Europe. This is a crucial factor in both the New Home Economics (NHE) theory and the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) that predict a negative association between fertility and education. However, more recently, the Gender Revolution (GR) approach has emphasised the role of gender egalitarianism both in society and within households as a boost for fertility. By adopting a comparative perspective on six European countries, this paper reports our research on the effect of education on the fertility choices in light of the foregoing three different theoretical explanations. Using data from the second wave of Generation and Gender surveys (GGS) for Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, and Poland, and the ISTAT survey “Famiglie e Soggetti Sociali” for Italy, we estimated the propensity to have the first and the second child birth on women born between 1940 and 1979 by means of multiprocess hazard models.For the first childbirth, the influence of education on fertility behaviours not only remains important but also tends to increase among younger cohorts. This result matches the NHE and SDT explanation, suggesting a similar evolution towards an erosion of the family. Conversely, for the second childbirth we found marked differences among countries suggesting an East-West polarisation giving support to the GR approach. However, peculiarities for the Italian case linked to a tempo effect emphasize the need to go beyond the West-East dichotomy.
Highlights
In many Western and Eastern European countries, the number of highly educated women reaching the reproductive age has in recent decades been exceeding the number of highly educated men (Vincent-Lancrin, 2008)
This is a crucial factor in both the New Home Economics (NHE) theory (Becker 1965, 1981) and the Second Demographic Transition (SDT)
In the “Theoretical underpinnings and research hypotheses” section, we introduce and discuss the theoretical background related to the education/fertility nexus in the literature and we formulate our research hypotheses
Summary
In many Western and Eastern European countries, the number of highly educated women reaching the reproductive age has in recent decades been exceeding the number of highly educated men (Vincent-Lancrin, 2008). General and consistent findings relate to the postponement of parenthood and low total fertility rates due to the expansion of higher education especially among women (Sobotka 2004; Ní Bhrolcháin and Beaujouan 2012; Basten, Sobotka and Zeman 2014). This is a crucial factor in both the New Home Economics (NHE) theory (Becker 1965, 1981) and the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) (van de Kaa 1987; Lesthaeghe 1995). Women are expected to contribute to the household income through activity in the paid labour market; on the other hand, men are more involved in household chores and childcare
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