Jan Van Bavel
2009-
Second births are of crucial importance in the near future because the rise of childlessness has not been the primary driving force in the emergence of below-replacement level fertility. Rather, the distinction between lowest-low and somewhat higher fertility within low fertility countries is highly determined by second birth probabilities. Yet, while the literature on the postponement of first births is abundant, less work has been published about the timing and likelihood of second births. At the same time, the literature provides a number of interesting theoretical arguments that beg to be systematized, operationalized, and investigated with up-to-date survey and other data. This is the ambition of the current project.
In the transition to current low fertility levels, two stages can be distinguished. During the first stage, starting from the latter part of the nineteenth century in most European regions, married couples limited their family sizes by earlier stopping: women stopped their childbearing careers both at a lower age and at a lower final family size. This first stage implied primarily a declining incidence of high parity births (birth orders three and above) and the establishment of the two-child norm. It was temporarily and partly halted and somewhat reversed during the post-war baby boom era. As to the timing of fertility, there was a shift towards childbearing at younger ages during this stage. During the second stage, starting in the 1970s, people started to postpone their first child. To some extent, postponement is being compensated by recuperation at higher ages but the catching up is incomplete so that many second and higher order births are foregone altogether. As a result, period fertility has dropped to levels that are structurally below the replacement level.
Although the level of childlessness has increased somewhat in many countries, a drop of cohort first birth probabilities was not the major driving force behind the emergence of very low fertility in Europe. For example, the level of childlessness is not systematically higher in lowest-low fertility countries than in other regions. Apparently, the biological, psychological, and social incentives remain strong enough for most people to want at least one child. The gap between lowest-low and ordinary low fertility crucially depends rather on the timing and likelihood of second births.
This project will contribute to our understanding of second births from three different perspectives. First, we will investigate in detail to what extent and through what mechanisms the postponement of first births affects the timing and likelihood of second births. Second, we will investigate how the consequences of the first birth on people’s lives and households in turn affect their second birth rates. Third, we also adopt an intergenerational perspective and investigate to what extent second birth rates are influenced by the quantum of fertility in earlier generations. Throughout, we adopt a life course perspective to organise our thinking about micro-macro linkages.
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