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Sub-Replacement Fertility Intentions in Austria

Intentions de fécondité inférieures au seuil de remplacement en Autriche

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Abstract

Combining the data of the 1986–2001 Microcensus surveys, I reconstruct trends in fertility intentions across time and over the life course of Austrian women born since the 1950s. Young adults in Austria expressed fertility intentions that were below the replacement-level threshold as early as in 1986 and women born since the mid-1950s consistently desired fewer than two children on average throughout their reproductive lives. A two-child family norm, however, still clearly dominates the fertility intentions of different age, cohort and education groups. Uncertainty about childbearing intentions is rather common, especially among younger and childless respondents. Different assumptions about reproductive preferences of undecided respondents affect estimates of the mean intended family size. Although Austrians were among the first in Europe to express low fertility intentions, their position is no longer unique. By the early 2000s, young women in a number of other European countries also expressed sub-replacement fertility intentions.

Résumé

A partir des données des enquêtes de Microcensus de la période 1986–2001, nous avons reconstruit l’évolution dans le temps et au cours de la biographie des intentions de fécondité des femmes autrichiennes nées dans les années 50. Les jeunes adultes en Autriche exprimaient déjà des intentions de fécondité inférieures au seuil de remplacement dès 1986, et les femmes nées au milieu des années 50 souhaitaient moins de deux enfants en moyenne tout au long de leur vie reproductive. Une norme de deux enfants par famille domine toutefois clairement les intentions de fécondité des différents groupes d’âge, de cohorte et de niveau d’éducation. L’incertitude à propos des intentions de fécondité est plutôt répandue, en particulier parmi les enquêtés jeunes et sans enfant. Les hypothèses concernant les préférences des enquêtés indécis conditionnent les estimations de la taille souhaitée de famille. Bien que les autrichiens aient été les premiers à exprimer des intentions de fécondité basses, leur situation n’est plus unique: au début des années 2000, les jeunes femmes d’un certain nombre d’autres pays européens avaient des intentions de fécondité inférieures au seuil de remplacement.

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Notes

  1. Regretfully, Microcensus surveys do not provide information about fertility ideals. As a result, the frequently reported fall in family size ideals in Austria deep below replacement level (Goldstein et al. 2003; Testa 2007) cannot be analysed here. Similarly, due to lack of data on men, Microcensus data cannot corroborate the Eurobarometer findings on the extreme low family size ideals among Austrian men (Testa 2006).

  2. According to the 2001 census data the mean number of children per woman with university education born in 1955–1959 was 1.35 and almost 30% of these women remained childless (Prskawetz et al. 2008; Spielauer 2005; Statistics Austria 2005).

  3. Frequently, fertility intentions and desires have distinct meanings, with desires referring to the number of children respondents would like to have in their lives (see McClelland 1983, pp. 296–298 for different specifications) and intentions reflecting a “determination to act in a certain way” (Morgan 2001, p. 154). In other words, intentions represent a measure where respondents take into account actual and expected constraints that may prevent them from realising their desires. The German word [Kinder]Wunsch, used in the analysed Microcensus surveys, is commonly translated as a desire or a wish. However, in the absence of an established German term for fertility intentions, Kinderwunsch is also commonly translated as childbearing intention.

  4. More information is provided in German at http://www.statistik.at/web_de/frageboegen/private_haushalte/mikrozensus/index.html.

  5. Questions on fertility intentions were also asked in 1976 and 1981, but only married women were included. These data are not comparable with the more recent surveys and are not analysed here.

  6. These proxy responses, i.e. responses of the reference persons on behalf of other persons in the household are commonly included in the Microcensus surveys, for instance in the case of mothers replying on behalf of their young adult daughters still living in the parental home. Moreover, these responses are problematic and prone to misinterpretations of other people’s intentions.

  7. In the 2001 survey organisers decided not to accept proxy responses in the intentions module and instructed the interviewers to contact eligible respondents who could not be reached in person later by phone (Kytir et al. 2002, p. 840; Klapfer 2003, p. 826). However, the dataset does not make it possible to ascertain whether most of the responses coded as proxy interviews in 2001 were indeed conducted by phone with the respondents themselves. Consequently, I decided to eliminate all the possible proxy interviews from the 2001 dataset as well.

  8. For instance, in the 2001 survey 18% of the valid interviews in the intentions module (i.e. those excluding the respondents who did not respond to the intentions questions) were provided by proxy persons. This share was only 11% among the respondents with children and reached 30% among the childless. At age 20–25, 34% of responses were proxy interviews.

  9. The incompatibility of the 2006 survey with previous waves is also signalled by the higher than expected levels of completed fertility among the respondents. Three possible causes of such incompatibility can be identified. First, in contrast with previous surveys, the set of questions on fertility intentions in 2006 started with an opening statement suggesting that there are too few children born in Austria: “The question on childbearing desires gives an opportunity, among other things, to better estimate whether the trend towards too low numbers of children will continue or whether we may expect increasing numbers of births in the years to come” (author’s translation). This statement might have encouraged respondents to express higher fertility desires. Second, the 2006 survey was conducted by phone, whereas the previous surveys were conducted by face-to-face interviews. Third, markedly fewer respondents expressed uncertainty about their intentions in 2006 (6.3%). It appears that unlike in previous surveys the interviewers in the 2006 survey had not offered respondents the explicit option of expressing uncertainty.

  10. Within the category of women with tertiary education it would be useful to look separately at women with education provided by universities of applied science primarily training teachers and social workers. Their fertility is considerably higher and their childlessness is lower than among women with full university education (Spielauer 2005; Prskawetz et al. 2008). However, the sample size of the Microcensus does not allow such a distinction for different age (cohort) categories.

  11. According to OECD (2005), 18.3% of Austrians were enrolled in education at age 25, of whom only 2.3% were enrolled in lower than tertiary education. Enrolment in education dropped to 6.7% at age 29.

  12. The age and parity composition of the female population was estimated from the 1991 Census results combined with the vital statistics on births by age of mother and birth order of child prior and after the date of the 1991 Census (see Prskawetz et al. 2008 for more details).

  13. Finer specifications can be adopted as well. For instance, the low and the high values of the range distributions of the undecided respondents can provide further sub-variants to the medium variant (see Smallwood and Jefferies (2003) for a discussion of similar assumptions in England and Wales).

  14. This estimation was broadly in agreement with the findings in the other rounds of the survey and has not resulted in any obvious inconsistencies in trends over time, across cohorts, and age groups.

  15. A preference for larger-family size is similarly uncommon in the Czech Republic where according to the 2005 Generations and Gender Survey only 14% of women aged 18–24 intended to have three or more children (Sobotka et al. 2008, Table 7).

  16. After controlling for selected factors (age, employment, partnership status, and the indicators of the value of children), van Peer and Rabušic (2008) found that higher-educated men and women were less likely to prefer small family sizes (0 or 1 child) than their lower-educated counterparts.

  17. Earlier surveys of fertility desires in Austria, then conducted among married women only, did not detect any differences in fertility desires for women with higher than primary education. In 1978 married Austrian women of reproductive age with higher than primary education desired between 2.06 and 2.11 children on average (Institut für Demographie 1980, p. 138, Table A.2.6). However, differences in the proportion of married women among education groups as well as the lacking data for unmarried women make these results incomparable with my analysis.

  18. Note, however, that the articles Goldstein et al. (2003) and by Testa (2007) focus primarily on ideal, not intended family size. Eurobarometer data, which suffer small sample size, indicate even lower values of intended family size among Austrian women than the Microcensus data presented here.

  19. Comparability of results for these countries may be affected by using different data sources, different surveys and also by the differences in the questions on fertility intentions. Also the choice of uncertainty, when allowed, hinders this comparability. Nevertheless, these methodological issues do not affect general conclusions on the spread of sub-replacement family desires.

  20. The data reported in Table 5 assume that uncertain respondents will have either no (additional) child or only one additional child (Smallwood and Jefferies 2003, p. 21, Table 5).

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Richard Gisser for supplying valuable information on Austrian Microcensus surveys, to Karin Schrittwieser from Statistics Austria for answering questions on the 2006 Microcensus survey, and to Werner Richter for carefully editing the manuscript. The article has greatly benefited from the comments and suggestions made by two anonymous reviewers as well as by Maria Rita Testa and Dimiter Philipov. The work was conducted within the project ‘Fertility Intentions and outcomes: The Role of Policies to Close the Gap’, funded by the European Commission, Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities (contract no. VS/2006/0685).

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  1. Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Wohllebengasse 12–14, 6th floor, 1040, Vienna, Austria

    Tomáš Sobotka

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Appendix: Questions on Fertility Intentions in Austrian Microcensus Surveys

Appendix: Questions on Fertility Intentions in Austrian Microcensus Surveys

1.1 German text

XK3 “Haben Sie den Wunsch, irgendwann in Ihrem weiteren Leben (noch) ein oder mehrere Kind(er) zu bekommen? Bitte rechnen Sie eine allfällige gegenwärtige Schwangerschaft mit!”:

[Responses: R01 “Ja”, R02 “Nein”, R03 “Weiß nicht”, (R04: no reply)]

XK4a “Wie viele Kinder wünschen Sie sich (noch)?”

[Responses: 1..15]

XK4b “Und wenn Sie gebeten werden, doch eine ungefähre Zahl anzugeben, wie viele Kinder wünschen Sie sich (noch)? Sie können auch eine Von-bis-Anzahl angeben.”

1.2 English translation:

XK3: “Do you desire to have (yet) a(nother) child at any point in your future life? Please include also current pregnancy”

Possible responses:

  • Yes (→ XK4a)

  • No (→ END)

  • Does not know (→ XK4b)

  • No answer, refusal (only in 1986–2001 waves, → END)

XK4a: “How many more children do you desire?”

Possible responses:

  • Number (1–15)

  • Does not know (only in 1986–2001 waves, → XK4b)

  • No answer, refusal (only in 1986–2001 waves, → END)

XK4b: “And when you were asked to provide an approximate number, how many children do you desire (yet)? You can also choose a range from—to”

Possible responses:

  • Number ‹from x to x›, excludes possibility of choosing no additional children

  • Does not know

  • No answer, refusal (only in 1986–2001)

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Sobotka, T. Sub-Replacement Fertility Intentions in Austria. Eur J Population 25, 387–412 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-009-9183-0

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