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Educational Enrolment, Double-Status Positions and the Transition to Motherhood in Hungary

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Abstract

It is well known that participation in education is incompatible with the transition to motherhood. However, enrolment is overwhelmingly treated as a single status even though participation in education may be combined with employment—resulting in double-status positions, and the fertility implications of double-status positions are less clear-cut. Relying on normative and economic approaches, we develop original and competing hypotheses regarding the effect of double-status positions on the transition to motherhood. We also speculate on how the post-communist transition and institutional context might influence the hypothesised effects. The hypotheses are tested using event history data from the Hungarian Generations and Gender Survey. We employ event history methods, which take into account the potential endogeneity of employment and enrolment decisions. We find robust evidence that first birth rates are higher among women in double-status positions than among women who are merely enrolled, but that difference is smaller in younger cohorts than in older ones. We also find some evidence that first birth rates are lower in double-status positions than among women who are employed but not enrolled. Our findings suggest that the conflict between participation in education and motherhood is mitigated in double-status positions, especially among members of the oldest cohort. Since double status is prevalent in modern societies, but has different meanings in different contexts according to educational system and welfare state, we argue for future research on this issue.

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Fig. 1

Source: Own calculation, based on education statistics, Hungarian Central Statistical Office

Fig. 2

Source: Own calculation, based on education statistics, Hungarian Central Statistical Office

Fig. 3

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Notes

  1. Here we discuss only those aspects of the economic approach that focus on investments in human capital.

  2. For reasons of simplicity, the present discussion as well as subsequent derivations of hypotheses neglects the partners. We are of course aware of theories and empirical research that explore the effect of a partner’s income and education on the fertility behaviour of women. Nevertheless, partner effects of this kind are not considered in the present paper.

  3. Detailed analysis of the post-socialist transition and an outline of the Hungarian context are beyond the scope of the present paper. For a more detailed overview about institutional changes related to life-course transitions, see Spéder et al. (2010).

  4. In our empirical study, women born in 1961–1965 and in 1975–1983 are used to represent old and young cohorts.

  5. Marxist–Leninist political science degrees necessary to obtain higher (cadre) positions could be acquired via distant learning, but there were also other degrees obtainable through part-time education.

  6. Educational institutions were also interested in offering part-time educational programmes because they were allowed to charge fees to part-time students. Full-time education, in contrast, was free of charge during the 1990s and 2000s.

  7. For simplicity, we refer to this dataset as the three waves of the Hungarian GGS.

  8. During the analyses, we also estimated models in which partnership status was included. However, the inclusion of partnership status does not affect our conclusions. However, the inclusion of partnership status immediately raises the concern of endogeneity.

  9. The model is estimated using version 14 of Stata, with the help of the cmp module (Roodman 2011).

  10. See Sect. 3.2 for the specification of the selection model and the estimation method.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions. The research was supported by the grant “Mapping Family Transitions: Causes, Consequences, Complexities, and Context” (No. K 109397) of the Hungarian Science and Research Foundation (OTKA). Bartus also received financial support from the János Bolyai Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hungarian Demographic Research Institute, Buday László utca 1–3, Budapest, 1024, Hungary

    Zsolt Spéder

  2. Corvinus University Budapest, Fővám tér 8., Budapest, 1093, Hungary

    Tamás Bartus

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  1. Zsolt Spéder
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  2. Tamás Bartus
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Correspondence to Zsolt Spéder.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 9, 10 and 11.

Table 9 Means of enrolment status and human capital characteristics by employment–enrolment status and birth cohorts
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Table 10 Trivariate probit estimates of the enrolment equation of the joint conception–enrolment models
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Table 11 Trivariate probit estimates of the employment equation of the joint conception–enrolment models
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Spéder, Z., Bartus, T. Educational Enrolment, Double-Status Positions and the Transition to Motherhood in Hungary. Eur J Population 33, 55–85 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-016-9394-0

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