Couples’ Educational Pairings, Selection into Parenthood, and Second Birth Progressions

• In Event: 2340 - Social Inequality in Family Formation (Co-sponsored with the Section on Sociology of Population)

Abstract

Recent research on couples’ fertility indicates that couples with two highly educated partners have higher transition rates to second and third births, compared to couples with one or two lower educated partners. Yet, it is not well understood to what extent this is due to an underlying selection process, which already pre-selects certain couples to make the transition to parenthood (versus remaining as a childless couple, or separating). We address this question by using Finnish register data and a joint model for the transition to first and second births among co-residential couples, adjusting for unobserved heterogeneity. We confirm that homogamous highly educated couples in Finland have the highest second birth transition rates among all educational pairings. This remains the case even after taking the selection into parenthood and unobserved heterogeneity into account. Even when these sources of selection are adjusted for, highly educated couples exhibit the highest second birth rates. The differences in second birth rates to the other types of couple become smaller, though, suggesting that part of the elevated birth rates of these ‘power couples’ is due to selectivity into first birth.

Authors

• Natalie S. Nitsche, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

• Alessandra Trimarchi, Ined

• Marika Jalovaara, University of Turku