This paper examines causality and parameter instability in the long-run relationship between fertility and women’s employment. This is done by a cross-national comparison of macro-level time series data from 1960–2000 for France, West Germany, Italy, Sweden, the UK, and the USA. By applying...

At the beginning of the transition period, many Russian households faced substantial economic hardships and uncertainties. An economic downturn had become one of the major factors respon-sible for the significant and rapid decline of Russian fertility. However, many households tried to cope with...

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We investigate the hypothesis that the propensity of a stepfamily couple to have a shared child is inversely related to the responsibility for rearing pre-union children. We compare effects of coresident pre-union children to those of nonresident, and effects of the woman’s children to those...

Increasing proportions of couples are making childbearing decisions in stepfamilies but there has been no general comparative picture across European countries on stepfamily formation. The present paper aims to fill this gap and provides a comparison of European countries using macro-level...

Interpersonal relationships of support have been found to be an important factor in individual fertility intentions in Central and Eastern European countries. The foundations of this positive influence have not been well explored to date, however. We present a theoretical discussion on...

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Models on the impact of social networks on reproductive behavior primarily address processes of interpersonal influence on fertility related values and utility perceptions and consider aspects of social support and social capital only to a small extend. On the basis of an exchange theoretical...

The standardised rate of third births declined by over 50 percent in Austria between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s. The third birth was also postponed gradually over the years up through 1991-92, after which the tempo of childbearing suddenly increased in response to a change in the...

Research about fertility has focused in the main on studying separately the influences of communication networks and social capital on reproductive behavior, but it has rarely tried to integrate both network properties theoretically or analytically. We therefore discuss a general model of...