Thematic Focal Person: Tomáš Sobotka
Overall vision
Individuals with a high level of education have been at the forefront of the shift to small family size. In low-fertility countries, concerns about low fertility have been especially focused on women with tertiary education levels, who typically have the lowest fertility and highest childlessness rates. Is this pattern likely to prevail as more and more women receive high education and increasingly outperform men in educational attainment? Several interconnected trends including better access to childcare, increased help by male partners, higher earning power, and more stable family environment, and high educational homogamy in partnerships and marriages may eventually bring a reversal in the negative association between women’s level of education and fertility in rich societies.
During the next years (2012-2014) the WIC Human Reproduction team aims to provide systematic evidence on contemporary fertility preferences and fertility behavior by level of education. This research will first focus on high-income, low-fertility, societies. Five interrelated topics will be analyzed:
• Is there a systematic negative gradient in fertility by level of educational attainment among men, similar to that found among women? •Does a higher level of childlessness explain most of the educational differences in fertility among women? • Do highly educated men and women usually desire a smaller family size than their lower-educated counterparts or do they display a higher “gap” between fertility preferences and actual fertility? • Is there evidence of the narrowing of the educational differences in fertility in the most developed countries and, if so, what are the main reasons for that? Do highly educated men and women have smaller unwanted fertility than their lower-educated counterparts and, if so, what are the main reasons for this pattern?
Specific work plans
EURREP Project
The core activities of the WIC Human Reproduction team will be guided by the new project Fertility, reproduction and population change in 21st century Europe (EURREP), funded by the Starting Independent Researcher Grant, awarded to Tomáš Sobotka by the European Research Council (ERC). This 5-year project commenced in February 2012.
Combining detailed databases, especially the expanding Human Fertility Database, with surveys and theoretical perspectives, this project will study key issues related to fertility and reproduction in 21st century Europe and their implications. The EURREP project consists of four broad interrelated themes.
The first theme, “Advancing fertility research in contemporary Europe: Theories, patterns and reversals” is most extensive. European fertility and reproductive ‘regimes’ will be compared to those in other rich regions. The research team will review middle-range theories and explanations of fertility and examine their validity and premises at different levels of explanation (e.g., region-specific, time-specific, group-specific, aggregate-level, individual-level, etc). We will look at how and under which circumstances they can explain changes in fertility trends as well as the observed reversals in correlation between selected aggregate-level indicators (female labour force participation, GDP level, marriage rates, etc.) and fertility. The second theme aims to provide a systematic analysis of fertility intentions and their relevance for understanding contemporary fertility. Here the key issue is whether and why a systematic disagreement between intended and realised fertility exists at an aggregate level and whether it can be partly explained by institutional conditions. The third theme links fertility with migration and population changes, and aims at advancing methodology and proposing new indicators. The fourth theme focuses on developing the Human Fertility Database and complementary data collection as well as publication activities.
Three factors will permeate different parts of this analysis: The role of education differentials in fertility for men and women, the importance of religion and religiosity, and the role of migrants for shaping fertility differences between regions. Related data-collection activities will result in a detailed database on fertility intentions by country, sex, age, cohort and level of education and, ideally, a similar database on completed fertility rates by level of education.
The IIASA / Oxford Argument-Based Demographic Forecasting: Fertility scenarios for low-fertility countries
This project aims to produce population projections by age, sex, and level of educational attainment for individual countries. It is the first project of the WIC, which builds and refines a methodology used in previous rounds of projections developed at the World Population Program at IIASA. It is based on a transparent methodology that narrows the gap between substantive scientific analyses and assumption-making. The key element is the evaluation of an extensive survey of experts that lists factors which are likely to shape the future of fertility, mortality, and migration. The “Human Reproduction” team will lead the assessment of factors affecting the future trajectories of fertility in low-fertility settings. It will also organise a seminar in Vienna in December 2011, where invited major experts will discuss the validity and the likely impact of these factors.
