Contextual Conditions and Childbearing in Cohabitation across Europe

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.