Abstract
Fertility, or childbearing, expectations have been increasingly identified as an important area of research, at least in part because expectations may help us to understand family issues of concern across the globe such as unintended pregnancies, low fertility, and delayed childbearing. While much research has focused on the link between expectations and behavior, this study extends the literature by asking how those expectations were shaped initially. Specifically, we explore how one’s economic context is related to expectations. This paper further extends the literature by focusing on two dimensions of the parenthood expectations of young people (men and women aged 18–27). Using the 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2011 waves of the Panel Studies of Income Dynamics (PSID) Transition to Adulthood (TA) sample, we considered whether young people expected to have children in the future and, for those who did, when they expected to do so. The results support financial-strain theories of the relationship between (subjective and objective) economic circumstances and childbearing expectations. Women and men with lower earnings, less education, and more worries about their future job prospects are more uncertain whether they will have children. Of those who expect to have children, those with more education and more worries expect to do so later in life. Further analyses reveal that race and gender condition these relationships.
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Notes
Although the terms “fertility intentions” and “expectations” are commonly used in the literature, we prefer the terms childbearing or parenthood intentions and expectations to shift the focus from fertility and pregnancy to parenting.
We use the terms economic context and circumstances interchangeably throughout this paper.
This includes a handful of studies using non-US data which have investigated the relationship between economic circumstances and childbearing expectations or intentions. Although that literature is useful for motivating hypotheses, additional tests of this relationship in the US context are warranted. Expectations and work experiences reflect deep cultural and societal factors that likely vary systematically by country. Understanding the relationship between work and fertility in European countries which often have relatively generous, well-established welfare states and both (very) low fertility and low childbearing expectations tells us little about how expectations may be linked to economic circumstances in the US.
Given the age range of our sample, it is entirely possible that some people had not yet graduated from high school but were on track to attend college; however, that does not appear to have been the case. Of those 18-19 year olds who were currently in school, only 24 out of 1465 respondents (1.6%) had less than a high school diploma.
We also explored whether the relationship between individual economic circumstances and childbearing expectations varied by macro-level economic context, but we did not find this to be the case.
Across groups there were differences in the probability of being uncertain when comparing employed and those in the “other” employment status category. However, because the “other” group is homogenous, we do not believe it wise to interpret these differences as substantively meaningful.
By “effect” we mean the change in predicted probability associated with a change in the independent variable. We do not mean to imply that we are establishing overall causality in our regression models.
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Brauner-Otto, S.R., Geist, C. Uncertainty, Doubts, and Delays: Economic Circumstances and Childbearing Expectations Among Emerging Adults. J Fam Econ Iss 39, 88–102 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-017-9548-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-017-9548-1