Disentangling individual, familial and contextual factors influencing fertility

In the U.S., most research on unintended fertility tends to address differences by family background and the sociodemographic contexts in which unintended births occur. However, little is known about the mechanisms by which family background is associated with unintended childbearing. In this study, we propose childhood disadvantage as a key mediating factor that explains the family background gradient on unintended fertility. Drawing upon the life course and human capital formation literature, we identify four dimensions of childhood disadvantage: economic resources, family structure, parenting quality, and self-regulation. Using data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and event history models, this study examines the relative role that each dimension of childhood disadvantage plays in linking family background to unintended fertility.

Anthropological explanations of demographic outcomes have emphasized the need to understand how community structures contribute to those outcomes. Studies on fertility dynamics in Africa have focused on micro-level factors at the expense of the community context.
Using the most recent Demographic and Health survey data from Nigeria [West Africa], Kenya [East Africa], Egypt [North Africa], Cameroun [Central Africa] and Zimbabwe [Southern Africa]and multilevel modelling technique, our study demonstrate that there is significant community effects on African fertility patterns, even after controlling for a number of individual factors such as age, education, religion and ethnicity.The paper discusses the theoretical and practical implications of these findings to understanding emerging sub-saharan African fertility patterns.

Leaving the family of origin and entering into parenthood are two critical steps in the family formation process. Italy, as it is well known, is a country characterized by very low fertility and strong delay in starting an independent life.
Using the data from the survey “Critical aspects in the work life course in a gender perspective” carried out by the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) before the global economic crisis (2007) and the data from the survey “Youth Project” carried out in the mid-2012 by the Toniolo Institute for Advanced Studies (Catholic University, Milan) and IPSOS, we analyse a common sample of Italian young adults aged between 21 and 29, in order to evaluate the effect of the Great Recession. Our study focuses on both the intentions of becoming autonomous from the family of origin and of entry into parenthood. We found empirical evidence of a relevant impact of the economic crisis on fertility expectations but not on the intentions of leaving the parental home.

Premarital cohabitation and childbearing in cohabitation have increasingly gained ground across Europe. The aim of this paper is to investigate how contextual factors, e.g. societal values and economic conditions, relate to variation in childbearing in cohabitation, controlling for individual-level characteristics. Analyses are based on harmonized survey data from more than 44 thousands individuals nested in 126 sub-national regions nested in 15 countries. We propose a 3-level hierarchical model predicting the probability to get the first child in cohabitation vs. marriage. Our results show that contextual-level variation is highly relevant for understanding variation in childbearing in cohabitation. They suggest that across countries perceptions on the economic autonomy of women are highly positively associated with childbearing in cohabitation. This lends support to the Second Demographic Transition Framework. On the other hand, we find within countries a positive association between unemployment rates and childbearing in cohabitation, which indicates a pattern of disadvantage.