Impact of intergenerational relations on decision concerning marriage: comparative analysis with special focus on bridal pregnancies.

According to theory of second demographic transition change in norms and attitudes towards family formation should lead to increase in proportion of extramarital births and simultaneous decrease in proportion of marital births. However in countries like Poland significant fraction of marital births are those conceived outside of pre-maritally and delivered within marriage (26% bridal pregnancies in 2011). This pattern results from existence of normative tension related to legitimization of out-of-wedlock births. Our main research hypothesis states that this results mostly from pressure from older generation to obey the norm and is sanctioned by degree of economic support given to the youth. Thus, we expect higher incidence of bridal pregnancies among families with higher economic and social status.
In order to test above hypotheses we use data from GGS conducted in Poland. Additionally the results for Poland are confronted with results coming from other countries with high (Italy, Spain) and low (Netherlands) incidence of bridal pregnancies. Analyses are aimed at measurement of intergenerational pressure via social proximity of generations, economic status of older generation and economic status of young couple. For the purpose of modeling we use multinomial logit model for our outcome variable (type of family formation).