The Influence of Parental Educational Attainment on the Partnership Context at First Birth in 16 Western Societies

Judith C. Koops (), Aart C. Liefbroer () and Anne H. Gauthier ()
Additional contact information
Judith C. Koops: Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI/KNAW)
Aart C. Liefbroer: Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI/KNAW)
Anne H. Gauthier: Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI/KNAW)

European Journal of Population, 2017, vol. 33, issue 4, No 4, 533-557

Abstract: Abstract In the US, growing up with parents with a low socio-economic status (SES) has been shown to increase the chance of having a birth outside marriage. However, less is known about the influence of parental SES in other Western countries. The current paper examines the association between parental educational attainment with the partnership context at first birth in 16 European and North American countries, by differentiating births within marriage, within cohabitation, or while being single. Moreover, we test whether the association between parental education and partnership context at childbirth changes over cohorts and whether its influence changes when controlling for own educational attainment. Data from the Generations and Gender Programme were used, as well as data from the American National Survey of Family Growth, the Canadian General Social Survey, and the Dutch Survey on Family Formation. The results show that in North American and East European countries, but not in West European countries, lower parental education increases the risk of having a birth within cohabitation. Moreover, in North American countries and half of the West and East European countries, lower parental education increases the risk of having a birth while being single. The association of parental education with the partnership context at birth tends to change furthermore over cohorts, although no clear pattern could be observed between countries. The study suggests that the intergenerational transmission of education is an important mechanism in explaining the influence of parental education, although other mechanisms also appear to be at work.

Keywords: Fertility; Childbearing; Cohabitation; Single parenthood; Europe; North America (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10680-017-9421-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:eurpop:v:33:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s10680-017-9421-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10680

DOI: 10.1007/s10680-017-9421-9

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Population is currently edited by Helga A.G. de Valk

More articles in European Journal of Population from Springer, European Association for Population Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().