Search

This study examines the effect of the COVID‐19 pandemic on fertility in Norway at the individual level. Studies using data at the macrolevel have found a positive short‐term effect of the pandemic on the fertility level in Norway, but women's fertility response to the pandemic may differ depending on their life situation. We use the first lockdown on March 12, 2020, as a marker of the pandemic and apply a regression discontinuity design to compare births of women that were conceived before the pandemic started with those conceived during the first eight months of the pandemic. The positive effect on women's fertility in Norway was mainly driven by women in life phases that have generally high fertility rates (women aged 28–35 years and women who already have children). These groups are likely to be in an economically and socially secure and stable situation in which the restrictions due to the pandemic had limited influence. Besides two exceptions, we do not find differences in the effect of the pandemic on childbearing by women's work situation. This is most likely related to the strong welfare state and the generous additional pandemic‐related measures taken by the Norwegian government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study examines the effect of exposure to different economic narratives of the future on fertility intentions of Norwegian couples. Background: Fertility patterns should not only be interpreted in relation to economic uncertainty conceptualized as objective constraints. One should also consider that subjective narratives of economic uncertainty may have a significant role in fertility decision‐making. Method: Data were collected from a controlled laboratory experiment of both partners in heterosexual couples in fall 2019 in Oslo, Norway (N = 838). The participants were randomly assigned to read either a negative or a positive future economic scenario, while a control group was not assigned to any scenario. Results: The economic scenarios influenced couples' fertility intentions, with the negative scenario causing a clear decrease in fertility intentions and the positive scenario causing an increase in fertility intentions. Men and women responded in similar ways to the scenarios. The effect of exposure to the scenarios is not moderated by objective measures such as couple employment status and income, except in one case. Conclusion: Our experimental setting demonstrates that people's fertility intentions are shaped by their subjective view of the future economic situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Childbearing outside of marriage has increased drastically in recent decades. However, the existing explanations for this development are not coherent. Proponents of the Second Demographic Transition framework view the rise in nonmarital childbearing as part of a pattern of progress driven by processes such as emancipation from traditional social norms, whereas other scholars perceive this trend in the context of a “pattern of disadvantage,” as nonmarital births are often concentrated among lower socioeconomic groups. In this paper, we posit that the relevance of the aforementioned theoretical explanations might vary depending on the geographic scale at which variation occurs: that is, across nation states, subnational regions, or individuals. To explore this hypothesis, we analyse harmonised survey data from 16 European countries. We apply hierarchical models to study how the likelihood that a woman living in a couple will have her first child either within nonmarital cohabitation or within marriage is linked to national and subnational regional variation in socioeconomic conditions that are related to explanations based on the existing theoretical considerations. Our results suggest that the Second Demographic Transition framework is very important for understanding variation between countries, whereas arguments pointing to a pattern of disadvantage seem to be more relevant at the individual and subnational regional level. It thus appears that taking a multilevel perspective can help us better understand why the existing theoretical explanations are not fully coherent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The two parts of the gender revolution have been evolving side by side at least since the 1960s. The first part, women's entry into the public sphere, proceeded faster than the second part, men's entry into the private sphere. Consequently, many employed mothers have carried a greater burden of paid and unpaid family support than fathers throughout the second half of the 20th century. This constituted women's "second shift," depressing fertility. A central focus of this paper is to establish second shift trends during the second half of the 20th century and their effects on fertility. Our analyses are based on data on cohort fertility, male and female labor force participation, and male and female domestic hours worked from 11 countries in Northern Europe, Western/central Europe, Southern Europe, and North America between 1960/70 and 2000/2014. We find that the gender revolution had not generated a turnaround, i.e. an increase in cohort fertility, by the end of the 20th century. Nevertheless, wherever the gender revolution has made progress in reducing women's second shift, cohort fertility declined the least; where the second shift is large and/or has not been reduced, cohort fertility has declined the most. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender equality and equity in the division of household labor may be associated with couples’ transitions to first, second, and third births. Our comprehensive analysis includes the division of housework and child care as well as the perception of whether this division is fair and satisfactory. We use a unique data set combining the Norwegian Generations and Gender Survey (2007) with information on childbirths within 3 years after the interview from the population register. We found that an unequal division of housework is associated with a decreased chance of first and subsequent births. Child care is most relevant when the respondent is satisfied with the division, as one-child couples where the respondent is less satisfied with the division of child care are less likely to have a second child. Our findings suggest that, even in a high-equity context such as Norway, equality and equity in the household are also important for childbearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has revealed a paradoxical simultaneity of egalitarian gender values and inegalitarian practices in Europe. The social-democratic welfare states, i.e. the Nordic countries, however, stand out collectively as having the most consistent relationship between egalitarian values and practices. The present article examines the consistencies and inconsistencies between gender values and practices among Norwegian married and cohabiting women and men, focusing particularly on the division of housework and childcare. Drawing on data from the Norwegian Generations and Gender Survey, we identify four distinct types of value–practice relationships in families. Analysis of predicted class membership probabilities reveals that half of our sample belongs to a family type with consistent gender values and household practices, of whom the majority has consistent egalitarian values and egalitarian practices. The other half belongs to a family type with inconsistent value–practice relationships. These are significantly gendered, leading us to recast the so-called paradoxical simultaneity of egalitarian values and inegalitarian practices into afemale paradoxand the simultaneity of inegalitarian values and egalitarian practices into amale paradox. We attribute the gendered nature of the inconsistencies between values and practices mainly to women's and men's dissimilar perceptions of how everyday household work is apportioned between partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Couples who have children are increasingly likely to have lived together without being married at some point in their relationship. Some couples begin their unions with cohabitation and marry before first conception, some marry during pregnancy or directly after the first birth, while others remain unmarried 3 years after the first birth. Using union and fertility histories since the 1970s for eleven countries, we examine whether women who have children in unions marry, and if so, at what stage in family formation. We also examine whether women who conceive when cohabiting are more likely to marry or separate. We find that patterns of union formation and childbearing develop along different trajectories across countries. In all countries, however, less than 40 per cent of women remained in cohabitation up to 3 years after the first birth, suggesting that marriage remains the predominant institution for raising children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this study, the authors used data from the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey to investigate relationship quality among currently married and cohabiting individuals ages 18 to 55 (N = 41,760) in 8 European countries (Bulgaria, France, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Romania, Russia, and The Netherlands). They expected to find fewer differences between cohabitation and marriage in countries where cohabitation is widespread. Controlling for a range of selection characteristics of respondents and their partners (e.g., common children, union duration, and education), the analyses showed that in all countries cohabiters more often had breakup plans and were less satisfied with their relationships than individuals who married. This cohabitation gap in relationship quality was largest in Russia, Romania, and Germany, which indeed were among the countries in the current sample where cohabitation was least prevalent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates that education influences men's childbearing behaviour in multiple ways. Focusing particularly on childlessness and multipartner fertility, key elements in our analyses are factors related to a man's capacity for economic and practical parenting, reflected e.g. through income prospects, job-security, job-flexibility and the gender-composition of the job. Our data covers all men living in Norway during 1970-2006 which allows for a detailed analysis of diversity along a wide range of different educational groups and cohorts. Childlessness among men is most pronounced among those with low education and least pronounced among those with high education, but at a given educational level, we also observe sharp contrasts between men within different fields of education. The educational pattern of multi-partner fertility is different from childlessness, as the propensity to have children with more than one woman is most pronounced among those with low education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report analyzes Norway's childcare cash-benefit policy and its relation to fertility decision making among Norwegian women with respect to having a second child. Using information from Norwegian registers, which include information on education and birth timing, the study's focus was on the childcare cash-benefit policy introduced in 1998. Both acceptance of childcare cash benefits and subsequent fertility timing were strongly influenced by women's educational attainment. Norwegian couples chose different strategies concerning work, childcare, and childbearing. Those individuals who were associated with a home scenario, taking the maximum length of cash benefits, transitioned more quickly to a second birth than did others. In contrast, those individuals who were associated with a work scenario, taking none of the cash benefits, proceeded much later, whereas those associated with a mixed scenario, taking cash benefits for a shorter period, were less likely to have a second birth in the near-term but more likely later on. Mixed-scenario couples may have returned to work as a means to reestablish eligibility for parental leave benefits before having a second birth. Whereas the policy appears to have accelerated birth timing, it is not clear whether the policy has increased overall fertility levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Nordic countries, gender equality is an explicit policy goal. For example, Norway and Sweden both offer paid parental leave for approximately one year following childbirth with earnings-related benefits and with certain periods reserved exclusively for the father. In this study, we examine the relationship between fathers' and mothers' use of parental leave and continued childbearing among couples in Norway and Sweden. The two countries offer largely similar family policies, but differ concerning family policy context. While Sweden has a consistent policy concerning gender relations, Norway has more ambiguous family policies giving incentives both to gender equality and childrearing at home. Our study is based on event-history analyses of Nordic register data and shows that fathers' parental leave use is positively associated with continued childbearing in both Norway and Sweden, for both one- and two-child couples. The association is stronger in Norway. For two-child families, a long period of leave for the mother is positively associated with a third birth. It seems as if the two-child family is highly compatible with the combination of work and family life, but that in families who choose to have more children, the mother often seems to have a weaker work orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]