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Transition to Parenthood: The Role of Social Interaction and Endogenous Networks

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Demography

Abstract

Empirical studies indicate that the transition to parenthood is influenced by an individual’s peer group. To study the mechanisms creating interdependencies across individuals’ transition to parenthood and its timing, we apply an agent-based simulation model. We build a one-sex model and provide agents with three different characteristics: age, intended education, and parity. Agents endogenously form their network based on social closeness. Network members may then influence the agents’ transition to higher parity levels. Our numerical simulations indicate that accounting for social interactions can explain the shift of first-birth probabilities in Austria during the period 1984 to 2004. Moreover, we apply our model to forecast age-specific fertility rates up to 2016.

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Notes

  1. Technically, this procedure is implemented such that the interval (0,1) is partitioned into subsets according to the probabilities given by Eq. 5. Then the agent draws a random number from the interval (0,1), which determines the choice of a specific value for d.

  2. Analogous to the distribution by age and education, we merge the eight educational groups into three groups.

  3. Mortality is not immediately relevant for the dynamics of the model. However, agents will leave the model population at some point. We apply age-specific mortality rates to model the dropping out of persons from the population rather than just removing agents at a specific age.

  4. Because we have data on birth probabilities only from 1984 onward, we need to combine the 1981 census data with 1984 birth probabilities.

  5. We have also investigated the performance of our model in terms of simulated first-birth probabilities and the total fertility rate, with alternative sets of education-specific influence parameters, as well as alternative goodness-of-fit measures (e.g., maximum metric, Euclidean distance). Our results are not sensitive to these variations.

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Authors and Affiliations

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

    Belinda Aparicio Diaz & Thomas Fent

  2. Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Sciences and Institute of Mathematical Methods in Economics, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Alexia Prskawetz

  3. Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Université de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Laura Bernardi

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  1. Belinda Aparicio Diaz
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  2. Thomas Fent
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  3. Alexia Prskawetz
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  4. Laura Bernardi
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Correspondence to Thomas Fent.

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Diaz, B.A., Fent, T., Prskawetz, A. et al. Transition to Parenthood: The Role of Social Interaction and Endogenous Networks. Demography 48, 559–579 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0023-6

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