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This work is jointly financed by the Ministry of Health and Care Services, Ministry of Children and Families, Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and the Ministry of Education and Research in Norway, through a grant to the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Hart’s contribution is partly supported by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, project number 262700. Poor health may constrain women’s capacity for active leisure, including family life and childrearing, for participation in the labor market and potentially affect preferences. Still, health remains remarkably understudied as a fertility determinant. We explore the association between health and fertility, using uptake of doctor-certified sickness absences and long-term health-related benefits as proxies for health. We examine whether compositional changes in health distributions and/or changes in the health-fertility association have contributed to the distinct fall in the total fertility rate in Norway since 2009. We use nationwide registry data on women aged 16-45 from 2004-2018. We analyse first, second and third births separately, and use annual observations with lagged timevarying covariates for education, sickness absence and long-term benefits. Income, employment and partnership status are also included in some subanalyses. Long-term benefit uptake is negatively associated with fertility, and the association weakens over time. In addition, such uptake is relatively rare, but increases slightly over time. The use of sickness absence is positively associated with fertility, and the association strengthens over time. Sickness absence uptake is common but decreases over time. It is thus unlikely that changes in women’s health and/or changes in the health-fertility association can help explain the observed decline in fertility observed after 2009. However, if the decrease in sickness absence uptake reflects a stronger labor market preference among women in fertile ages, it might help explain parts of the observed decline. Overall, the decline in fertility is most pronounced for healthy women. Health as a fertility determinant warrants further research, from other countries and with other proxies for health.

Fertility contagion through social networks increasingly attracts the interest of demographers. While these theories propose a causal mechanism, they are rarely put to test in a plausibly causal statistical design. This study applies quasi-experimental techniques to distinguish network effects from selection. Using contagion between siblings as an empirical example, we draw data from Norwegian administrative registers (N approx.170 000 men and women). We use twin births and the sex composition of children as random fertility shocks. We find no consistent significant effects of random shocks to a sibling's fertility on ego's fertility. First born women have larger families over time if a younger sibling chooses to have three children, as captured by the same sex instrument. We find no evidence that similarity strengthens contagion.

While fertility is positively correlated across generations, the causal effect of children's experience with larger sibships on their own fertility in adulthood is poorly understood. Using the sex composition of the two first-born children as an instrumental variable, we estimate the effect of sibship size on adult fertility. Estimations are done on high-quality data from Norwegian administrative registers. Our study sample is all first- or second-borns during the 1960s in Norwegian families with at least two children (approximately 110 000 men and 104 000 women). An additional sibling has a positive effect on male fertility, both by shifting some men into fatherhood and increasing family size. For women, a negative quantum effect emerges, driven by a preference for two rather than three children among women from three-child families. Studying mediators we show that mothers of girls shift relatively less time from market to family work when an additional child is born. We speculate that this scarcity in parents' time makes girls aware of the strains of life in large families, leading them to limit their own number of children in adulthood.

The work was supported by the Norwegian Research Council under Grant number 202442/S20. This study investigates how the association between union dissolution and childlessness depends on life course context. Data on union histories and fertility are taken from the Norwegian GGS. To observe union histories up to age 45, I include men and women born 1927-1962, giving a study sample of 3862 men and 3956 women. To grasp the life course context of union dissolutions, I group union histories similar in timing, occurrence and ordering of events together using sequence analysis. Union histories involving at least one dissolution are sorted into two groups: In the first group, a short first union is followed by quick repartnering, and the second union is still intact at age 45 for the majority. In this group, childlessness is low. In the second group, individuals spend more time as single before and after unions, and dissolving more than one union is common. This group displays high levels of childlessness. The association between a complex union history and childlessness is substantially and significantly stronger among men than among women. Among women, union histories involving a dissolution is more strongly linked to childlessness for the highly educated.