VID Colloquium
Do Egalitarian Societies Boost Fertility?
Andrea Seidl, Vienna University of Technology & Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, VID/ÖAW, WU)
Co-Authors:
Gustav Feichtinger, Alexia Fürnkranz-Prskawetz, Christa Simon, Stefan Wrzaczek,
Vienna University of Technology & Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, VID/ÖAW, WU)
Date: Tue, 18 Dec. 2012, Time: 03:00-04:00 pm
In general, the spreading of egalitarian family values has often been associated with a decline in fertility. However, recently a rebound in fertility has been observed in several industrialized countries. A possible explanation of this trend may be the spread of egalitarian values that induced institutional changes - such as expansion of child care facilities and father leave - that foster the combination of parenthood and the egalitarian lifestyle. In our paper we build up a formal model to study the diffusion from traditional to egalitarian gender behavior and its impact on fertility. We find that the long-run development of the total fertility within a population not only depends on key parameters such as the pace of diffusion of egalitarianism and the extent to which social interactions affect the egalitarians’ birth rates, but also on the initial number of traditionalists and egalitarians. We show under which conditions a fertility decline is followed by a subsequent recovery.
About the presenter
Andrea Seidl is researcher at the Vienna University of Technology and the Vienna Institute of Demography. Her main research interests include socio-economic applications of optimal control theory with a focus on the impact of non-linearities generated for example by social interactions. Currently she is working on issues related to population and family dynamics, gender equality and the associated development of fertility.