Search results

This research studies the influence and mechanism of rearing cost and endowment insurance on family fertility desire from the micro perspective.

Through the construction of overlapping generations (OLG) model and on the basis of this research purpose, the research hypothesis proposed by the theoretical model is tested by using the data of China household tracking survey (CFPS).

(1) Endowment insurance has an inhibitory effect on family fertility desire. The marginal effects of participating in old-age insurance on total fertility desire and boy fertility desire are – 3.2% and – 3.6% respectively. (2) The cost of rearing has a significant negative impact on family fertility desire. (3) There is regional heterogeneity in the impact of endowment insurance and rearing cost on fertility desire. (4) There is no significant difference in the impact of endowment insurance on fertility desire between urban and rural areas.

This research tries to fill the gap existing in the international literature by analyzing the micro mechanism of the influence degree of upbringing cost on fertility desire by introducing the rearing cost and fertility rate into the OLG, providing a micro basis for relevant quantitative calculation.

South Korea has shown ultra-low fertility since the 2000s despite a massive expansion of pro-natal policies. The purpose of this research is to analyse institutional and socio-cultural configurations surrounding Korea's pro-natal policy and provide implications as to why the comprehensive packages have not produced intended outcomes.

This study assumes institutional complementarities, suggesting that the effectiveness of policy depends on various support factors. Drawing out insights from the framework of de-familisation, the authors construct a gender and family framework to analyse the pro-natal policy configurations in Korea.

Labour market policies in Korea have explicitly aimed to support dual-earner couples and protect women's employment status after childbirth. However, the dualistic labour market and remaining female-caregiver norms lead to the polarisation of couples into dual earners and male breadwinners. In family policy, the government has rapidly increased affordable childcare services, but widespread distrust in private services and generous birth-related cash benefits formulate a tension between de-familisation and continued familisation. Other welfare programmes that attach welfare rights to marital status also prolong female-caregiver norms in institutional arrangements. The findings suggest that the ambivalence between recent policy developments and the existing arrangements can limit the effectiveness of the policy packages.

The framework based on institutional complementarities addresses the limitations of previous studies concentrating on the statistical testing of individual policy effects. A similar approach can be applied to other countries showing major policy efforts but producing unsatisfactory outcomes.

We chose to analyse Hungarian childlessness in order to map whether there is any voluntary childlessness at all in a society which is characterised by strong traditional family values and the widely accepted social norm that everyone should become a parent.

To answer to this question, we applied both quantitative and qualitative methods. First, we analysed the first three waves of the Hungarian panel survey ‘Turning Points of the Life Course’ conducted in 2001, 2004 and 2008. The focus is on men and women who were childless in 2001 and were still childless in 2008. To have a better understanding of the background of the quantitative results, we have also analysed 55 life-history interviews conducted with heterosexual men and women, who were recruited by using chain-referral sampling.

According to the qualitative findings the categorisation of childless people is quite fluid. For example, postponers became definitely childless while some originally voluntarily childless respondents became parents. However, the qualitative analysis allowed us to understand the mechanism behind this. In addition, using mixed methods also highlighted some inconsistencies between the qualitative and quantitative results.

Health-seeking behaviors (HSB) for infertility are influenced my multiple factors. The Behavioral Model of Health Services Utilization states that enabling resources and predisposing factors are essential in predicting HSB, and this study examined the relationship between state-level mandates that insurance providers cover infertility service on the rates of HSB for infertility among a nationally representative sample of women.

This study used data from the National Survey of Family Growth, identified 15 states with state-level mandates as enabling resources, and used sociodemographic characteristics as predisposing resources. Using discrete-time event-history analyses, and retrospective accounts of infertility HSB, these variables were examined to determine if residing in a state with state-level insurance mandates would increase the likelihood of HSB for infertility.

Results indicated an impact of state-level mandates on HSB for infertility. Specifically, the rates of HSB for infertility were higher among women residing in states with state-level mandates.

A limitation in this research stems from a data restriction that forced identifying a place-of-residence before or after 2000. To overcome this, multiple analyses, and a nested model comparison were tested to measure the effect of state-level mandates on HSB.

The comparative analysis of the rates of HSB for women residing in states with state-level mandates has not been considered before, and the results provide further detail into the infertility experience for women and their partners.

This study examined whether life satisfaction varied among women who occupy different motherhood statuses, and if these variations were influenced by differences in women’s internalization of cultural motherhood norms. We distinguished among women as biological mothers, stepmothers, and “double mothers,” who were both biological and stepmothers. We also included two groups of women without children: voluntary childfree and involuntary childless women.

Data were drawn from the National Study of Fertility Barriers and analyzed using OLS regression.

Biological mothers reported greater life satisfaction than women in other motherhood statuses. Accounting for the internalization of motherhood norms, double mothers had significantly lower life satisfaction compared to biological mothers, but voluntary childfree women had significantly greater life satisfaction. More detailed analyses indicated that internalization of cultural norms only appears to influence the life satisfaction of women with biological children.

The results suggest that it may not simply be motherhood that affects women’s well-being, but rather that women’s internalization of motherhood ideals, particularly when it corresponds with their motherhood status, significantly impacts well-being. Limitations of this study include small cell sizes for some categories of women where additional distinctions may have been useful, such as lesbian or adoptive mothers. Future work should incorporate diverse family forms and expand on the newly named category “double mothers.”

By providing a more nuanced approach to categorizing motherhood status, including identifying double mothers, stepmothers-only, and two groups of childless women, the study added detail that has been overlooked in previous work on well-being.

Internet data hold many promises for demographic research, but come with severe drawbacks due to several types of bias. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature that uses internet data for demographic studies and presents a general framework for addressing the problem of selection bias in non-representative samples.

The authors propose two main approaches to reduce bias. When ground truth data are available, the authors suggest a method that relies on calibration of the online data against reliable official statistics. When no ground truth data are available, the authors propose a difference in differences approach to evaluate relative trends.

The authors offer a generalization of existing techniques. Although there is not a definite answer to the question of whether statistical inference can be made from non-representative samples, the authors show that, when certain assumptions are met, the authors can extract signal from noisy and biased data.

The methods are sensitive to a number of assumptions. These include some regularities in the way the bias changes across different locations, different demographic groups and between time steps. The assumptions that we discuss might not always hold. In particular, the scenario where bias varies in an unpredictable manner and, at the same time, there is no “ground truth” available to continuously calibrate the model, remains challenging and beyond the scope of this paper.

The paper combines a critical review of existing substantive and methodological literature with a generalization of prior techniques. It intends to provide a fresh perspective on the issue and to stimulate the methodological discussion among social scientists.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how and whether young women’s strong and early preference for having children relates to the degree of occupational segregation of the careers they envisage for themselves and the careers they actually enter by the time they reach age 23.

Drawing on theories predicting that young women act to replicate gendered social stereotypes in their career choice and to anticipate careers they perceive to be reconcilable with future motherhood, the authors conduct quantitative analyses using panel data from the Transitions from Education to Employment Survey, a longitudinal survey of young people in Switzerland. OLS regression analyses how expressing a strong desire to have children at age 16 impacts: the proportion of women in the career engaged in at age 23 and the career anticipated age 16, relative to women not expressing this strong preference. Logistic regression examines whether selection into wanting children could be held responsible for the results. Finally the authors explore how initial expectations and later outcomes relate to each other.

Women who express a strong interest in having children (Kinderwunsch) at age 16 anticipate and enter occupations with a substantially higher proportion of women. Differences in objective labour-market characteristics, such as academic attainment, ability and psychosocial factors, namely self-efficacy, are not related to having a strong desire for children at an early age. Family factors have multifaceted effects.

This research uses data from a cohort who were age 16 in 2000. The rapidly changing social context of Switzerland necessitates updating this analysis at regular intervals across cohorts.

Discussion is required to expand young women’s understandings of the implications of different career choices and to broaden the range of options that they consider and to which employers provide access.

Wanting to have children is one of the factors that fuels occupational gender segregation. Although women might envisage that more gender-segregated occupations would allow them to combine work and family life, this may not be the case in reality.

This paper explores the important but previously under-explored relationship between early fertility preferences and occupational entry for women.