[Zurück]

E. Thomson, M. Winkler-Dworak, M. Spielauer, A. Fürnkranz-Prskawetz:
"Union Instability as an Engine of Fertility? A Microsimulation Model for France";
Demography, 49 (2012), S. 175 - 195.

Opportunities for conceiving and bearing children are fewer when unions
are not formed or are dissolved during the childbearing years. At the same time, union
instability produces a pool of persons who may enter new partnerships and have
additional children in stepfamilies. The balance between these two opposing forces
and their implications for fertility may depend on the timing of union formation and
parenthood. In this article, we estimate models of childbearing, union formation, and
union dissolution for female respondents to the 1999 French Etude de l´Histoire
Familiale. Model parameters are applied in microsimulations of completed family
size. We find that a population of women whose first unions dissolve during the
childbearing years will end up with smaller families, on average, than a population in
which all unions remain intact. Because new partnerships encourage higher parity
progressions, repartnering minimizes the fertility gap between populations with and
those without union dissolution. Differences between the two populations are much
smaller when family formation is postponed-that is, when union formation and
dissolution or first birth occurs after age 30, or when couples delay childbearing
after union formation.

Fertility . Union stability . France . Microsimulation

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0085-5

http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/PubDat_206632.pdf