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Fertility Intentions and Residential Relocations

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Demography

Abstract

This research addresses the question of whether fertility intentions (before conception) are associated with residential relocations and the distance of the relocation. We empirically tested this using data from two birth cohorts (aged 24–28 and 34–38 in the first survey wave) of the German Family Panel (pairfam) and event history analysis. Bivariate analyses showed that coupled individuals relocated at a higher rate if they intended to have a(nother) child. We found substantial heterogeneity according to individuals’ age and parental status, particularly for outside-town relocations. Childless individuals of average age at family formation—a highly mobile group—relocated at a lower rate if they intended to have a child. In contrast, older individuals who already had children—the least-mobile group—relocated at a higher rate if they intended to have another child. Multivariate analyses show that these associations are largely due to adjustments in housing and other living conditions. Our results suggest that anticipatory relocations (before conception) to adapt to growing household size are importantly nuanced by the opportunities and rationales of couples to adjust their living conditions over the life course. Our research contributes to the understanding of residential mobility as a by-product of fertility decisions and, more broadly, evidences that intentions matter and need to be considered in the analysis of family life courses.

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Notes

  1. The response rate in Wave 1 was 37 %, which led to the realization of 12,402 interviews. Attrition in Wave 2 was 22 % of the original sample, but attrition rates fell thereafter. By Wave 4, the attrition rate was 11 %, and the rate sank below 10 % in Wave 6. Younger age groups, changes in union status/new unions, or living-apart-together situations are confirmed correlates of panel attrition in pairfam (Müller and Castiglioni 2015).

  2. We exclude 634 individuals who stated they were infertile, 98 individuals in nonheterosexual unions, 880 individuals who had children with ex-partners by the start of the study, 1,752 individuals who participated only in the first survey wave, and 240 individuals without response to the fertility intentions item in Wave 1. We also exclude 900 individuals who left the study by Wave 3 because retrospective information on residence started to be collected in Wave 3. After transforming the data set into person-months, we exclude person-months in episodes of separation/divorce (but include living-apart-together situations). As with other surveys, line-item nonresponse restricts the number of observations we use in our analysis. From the remaining 150,618 person-month records, we exclude approximately 20 % due to line-item missing values. The investigation of missing data patterns concluded that exclusions were mostly due to lack of information on household income, room stress, and lack of partner information (such as education and employment status in some survey waves). A descriptive analysis of key variables showed that their distributions are not affected by missing data (see Table S1, Online Resource 1). We have avoided multiple imputation strategies known to behave poorly, particularly for unbalanced longitudinal categorical data (Allison 2002).

  3. Because no oversampling was performed in pairfam and variables that predict the probability of attrition are included in the multivariate analysis, we refrain from using weighting schemes that may lead to incorrect multivariate estimates. Descriptive analyses are also not weighed and hence are deemed sample summaries rather than population estimates.

  4. Translated from the original question in German: “Haben Sie vor, in den nächsten zwei Jahren (erneut) Mutter bzw. Vater zu werden?”

  5. It is fair to assume that those who have not had any thoughts about becoming a father or mother have no fertility intention because a fertility intention should require having thought about having a(nother) child.

  6. For respondents who are pregnant or whose partner is pregnant at the time of the interview, the question refers to a subsequent parity. Because we consider intentions and pregnancies as two mutually exclusive states of fertility decision-making in the analysis, we switch the fertility intentions indicator to 0 during the pregnancy stage, but we re-switch the indicator after the birth of the child.

  7. For marital status, cohabitation, living-apart-together situations, individual’s labor market status, and educational level, the transition month is known. For other time-varying covariates where the exact month of change in not known, response values switch in the month when data is collected if the respondent answers differently than in her/his latest survey participation. If a response is missing in a given wave, the interwave observations are excluded (see earlier sample exclusions). Additionally, for time-varying covariates referring to type of dwelling, residence location, distance to parents, and commuting response, values change in the relocation month using information from the subsequent survey wave.

  8. The nuanced associations between the fertility intentions and residential relocations may hide finer moderated associations with available resources or specific resource-intensive adjustments than the associations presented here with family life stages. We addressed this question in further analyses including interactions of fertility intentions and pregnancies with indicators of couples’ resources (i.e., income, education, employment) and housing conditions (i.e., homeownership), but new interactions were not statistically significant, and other results remained unchanged (results available on request).

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Acknowledgments

This research was partially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Grant No.VI711/1-1) and by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (Project No. CE140100027).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Life Course Centre & Institute for Social Science Research, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Sergi Vidal

  2. Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy, Bremen University, Bremen, Germany

    Johannes Huinink

  3. Institute for Social Sciences, Oldenburg University, Oldenburg, Germany

    Michael Feldhaus

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  1. Sergi Vidal
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  2. Johannes Huinink
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  3. Michael Feldhaus
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Correspondence to Sergi Vidal.

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Vidal, S., Huinink, J. & Feldhaus, M. Fertility Intentions and Residential Relocations. Demography 54, 1305–1330 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0592-0

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