Couple socioeconomic gender equality and fertility: A Bayesian analysis

Abstract

Connections between couples’ socioeconomic status and fertility have recently attracted noticeable attention, especially in the context of ongoing changes in gender roles and a growing variety of family models. Although gender differences have been examined quite deeply, couples’ procreative behaviour treated as a mutual result of male and female socioeconomic characteristics remains under-researched. Previous studies have suggested that the proper inference about procreative behaviour of a couple should be performed not only by analysing the characteristics of both parents, but also by, at the same time, considering the childless population. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate couples’ procreative behaviour with regard to the gender socioeconomic (in)equality between partners, taking into account that the behavioural drivers could differ among parents and childless couples. The Bayesian Zero-Inflated Poisson framework, which allows considering two states (childlessness and parenthood) within one statistical model, is applied. The empirical illustration is based on the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) dataset. The results show that including characteristics of both partners significantly improved the ability to describe fertility behaviour. Additionally, using other couple socioeconomic characteristics besides level of education, such as educational field and occupation, provided greater detail and gave greater explanatory power to couple’s reproductive behaviour. In particular, the overall level of socioeconomic status was found to have a negative influence on fertility timing, but a U-shape relationship with completed family size

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ORCID for Teresa McGowan: orcid.org/0009-0002-9231-3743

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