Educational differences in fertility among female same-sex couples

Maria Ponkilainen, Elina Einiö, Marjut Pietiläinen and Mikko Myrskylä
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Maria Ponkilainen: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Elina Einiö: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Mikko Myrskylä: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

No WP-2022-030, MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Abstract: Same-sex couples increasingly often live in legally recognized unions and have children as a couple. The accessibility of parenthood, however, depends on intersecting contextual and couple-level characteristics. Using Finnish register data on female same-sex couples who registered their partnership in 2006–2015, during which important legal reforms regarding same-sex parenthood took place, we explore how education and the existence of prior children predict childbearing within the same-sex partnership. Female same-sex couples’ likelihood of having a child within five years of registering a partnership increased from 34% to 43% over the observation window. This increase was not universal. For couples educated to tertiary level, the increase was from 39% to 52%. For primary and lower-secondary levels, the likelihood decreased from 26% to 8%. Couples with the highest level of education and no prior children were most likely to have a child, and couples with low education and a prior child born before the partnership were least likely to do so. These results highlight how intersectional factors shape female same-sex couples’ fertility behavior. Intensifying educational differences in couples’ fertility may reflect changes in couple-level characteristics as well as institutional barriers to childbearing that need more attention. Keywords Same-sex couple, Registered partnership, Family formation, Childbearing, Educational level

JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2022-030

DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2022-030

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