Modelling the socio-economic determinants of fertility: a mediation analysis using the parametric g-formula

Maarten J. Bijlsma and Ben Wilson
Additional contact information
Maarten J. Bijlsma: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

No WP-2017-013, MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Abstract: Theories predict that the timing of childbearing and number of children born are determined by multiple socio-economic factors. Despite this, many methods are unable to investigate the interrelationships between these determinants, including the direct and indirect influence that they have on fertility over the life course. Here we use the parametric g-formula to examine the interdependent influences of time-varying socio-economic processes – education, employment status and partnership status – on fertility. To demonstrate this approach, we study a cohort of women who were born in the UK in 1970. Our results show that socio-economic processes play an important role in determining fertility, not only directly but also indirectly. We show that increasing higher education attendance has a largely direct effect on early childbearing up to age 25, resulting in a substantial increase in childlessness. However, childbearing at later ages is dominated by an indirect effect of education on fertility, via partnership status and employment status, that is twice as large as the direct effect. We also use the g-formula to examine bias due to unobserved heterogeneity, and demonstrate that our results appear to be robust. We conclude that the method provides a valuable tool for mediation analysis in studies of interdependent life course processes. Key words: fertility, socio-economic determinants, mediation, g-formula, UK

Keywords: fertility; fertility determinants; socio-economic conditions; statistical analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2017-013.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2017-013

DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2017-013

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Wilhelm ().