VID Colloquium
A Couple-Perspective on Fertility Outcomes: Do Relative Resources Matter for First and Second Births in the US?
Natalie Nitsche, Yale University
Date: Tue, 5Mar. 2013, Time: 4:00-5:00 pm
McDonald (2000) has suggested that socio-economic gender equity within couples is a crucial component in women’s fertility decisions in developed nations. While McDonald’s approach is rather geared toward explaining low fertility in Western countries, testing it in the context of a developed nation with near replacement fertility such as the United States can shed additional light on how gender equity in couples relates to their childbearing behavior. Empirically, however, little is known about how couple dynamics are influencing fertility outcomes in the US, and previous research has not controlled for fertility desires. Using the NLSY79 and Cox event history models, this study examines if gender equity, measured as relative levels of income, relative education, and interactions of his and her labor market supply, affects the transition to first and second births in white married couples, net of her fertility desires and work-family preferences. The analyses are set up in a competing risk framework in order to allow for the competing risk of union dissolution. My findings show that intra-couple gender equity is significantly related to second birth transitions, but only weakly so to the transition to parenthood. Women with high levels of education have a significantly higher second birth rate when their partner is at least as well educated as themselves. In contrast, the models estimating first birth transitions show that an increase in her relative income is marginally significantly associated with a decrease in the first birth hazard, pointing rather to the relevance of her opportunity costs in the decision making process regarding a first birth.
About the presenter
Natalie Nitsche is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Yale University. She has obtained her undergraduate degree (Diplom in Political Science) from the Free University Berlin in 2006, received a M.A. and a M.Phil. in Sociology from Yale (2008 & 2011), and expects to finish her PhD in the summer of 2013. Research interests include social demography in general and fertility in particular, the work-family intersection, gender issues and social inequality. She is particularly interested in the changing relationship between education and fertility over time and in questions that address how gender equity on the couple and/or societal level affect fertility outcomes. Her work has been published in the Kölner Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie & Sozialpsychologie and a joint article with Jan Van Bavel on the effect of age norms on second birth rates in Europe is forthcoming in the European Sociological Review.