This study investigates the role of female labor-market attachment and earnings in childbearing progressions in two very different European contexts. By applying event history techniques to German and Danish register data during 1981-2001, we demonstrate how female earnings relate to first, second and third birth propensities. Our study shows that female earnings are positively associated with first birth fertility in Denmark, while this is not the case in West Germany. We interpret our findings based on the fact that Danish social context and policy encourage women to establish themselves in the labor market before becoming a mother, while the German institutional context during the 1980s and 1990s was not geared towards encouraging maternal employment. For higher order births, the results are less clear-cut. For Denmark we find a slightly positive correlation between female earnings and second birth fertility, while the association is somewhat negative for third order births. In Germany, women tend to exit the labor market when becoming a mother. Non-employed mothers have elevated second and, in particular, third birth rates. For the group of mothers that are employed, we only find a weak association between their earnings and higher order fertility.
Research shows consistently that social ties are important for longevity, and they may be particularly important during adolescence. An absence of social ties, or social isolation, during adolescence may adversely affect long-term health and wellbeing. While prior research has examined associations between isolation from friends and long-term health, and having no siblings and mortality, no study (of which we are aware) considers jointly both the role of having no friends and no siblings, nor more generally with whom adolescents spend time, and the risk of premature mortality. This paper extends the literature by drawing on data from the Stockholm Birth Cohort Study to examine the association between different types of social isolation during adolescence (i.e., an absence of friends, siblings, and time with other adolescents) and the risk of premature mortality by midlife. Results suggest that having no siblings, being unliked at school, and spending (mostly) no time with other adolescents, increases the risk of premature mortality. The association between being unliked and premature mortality was attenuated by demographic and adolescent characteristics. Consistent with our expectations, net of a robust set of covariates, adolescents who had no siblings and mostly spent no time with other adolescents (i.e., isolates) were the group most vulnerable to premature mortality by midlife. However, this was only true for females.
This paper examines the childbearing behaviour of Polish migrant women and their descendants in Sweden. Also considering stayers in the country of origin, we rely on a country-of-origin and country-of-destination approach in a careful examination regarding the relevance of three hypotheses on migrant fertility: the socialisation, selection, and adaptation hypotheses. We analyse the transitions to first and second births based on a piecewise exponential model, using Swedish register data and the Polish Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) first wave. The results support the socialisation hypothesis, as the Polish stayers and the first-generation Polish migrants have their first child at younger ages and are less likely to remain childless than the other groups but are also more likely to not proceed to a second child, unlike the Swedish natives and the second generation. We find partial support for the selection hypothesis. Descriptively, we observe signs of selection into migration based on education, cohort, and marital status. Additionally, our study shows that the impact of marriage varies between stayers and migrants, in the first-birth transition, suggesting selection into migration when it comes to unobserved characteristics as well. The adaptation hypothesis is also supported, as the fertility behaviour of the second generation more closely resembles that of the Swedish natives than that of the first generation and differs more from that of the Polish stayers in terms of both quantum and timing of the first and second births.
In recent decades, while female labour force participation rates in South Korea have increased, the country’s total fertility rates have declined dramatically. This study explores the association between women’s labour force participation and second birth rates in South Korea over the period 1980–2006. An event-history analysis is applied to longitudinal data from waves 1–10 of the Korea Labour and Income Panel Study. The study shows that post-birth labour force participation significantly reduced women’s propensity for having a second child, whereas non-employment after first birth was associated with an increased propensity. Women with highly educated husbands had a higher likelihood of enlarging the family. Further, the second birth trend in Korea fluctuated in tandem with the country’s institutional and socio-economic development. The childbearing propensity of homemakers was especially sensitive to the business cycle.
In this study, we investigate whether immigrant parents hold sex preferences for children in Sweden, a country that promotes gender equality and where parental preference for having a girl prevails. By applying event-history models to Swedish register data, we investigate the transition to third birth by the sex composition of children born among immigrants. In particular, we examine whether women who come from countries with strong son-preference cultures accelerate their process of having a third child if their prior children are both girls. We pay particular attention to immigrants from China, Korea, India and the former Yugoslavia, where son preference culture has been well documented in the literature. Our results show that women from China, Korea, India and the former Yugoslavia are more likely to have a third child if they have two girls than if they have two boys or a boy and a girl. Interestingly, mothers from China, Korea and India tends to accelerate their process to get a son, whereas mothers from the former Yugoslavia do not hasten. Furthermore, the 1.5 generation and the immigrant mothers with a Swedish partner from China, Korea and India demonstrate a girl preference, as the native Swedes do, whereas the 1.5 generation immigrant mothers from the former Yugoslavia do not show any sign of adaptation.