Assessing Short-Term Fertility Intentions and Their Realisation Using the Generations and Gender Survey: Pitfalls and Challenges

Zuzanna Brzozowska () and Eva Beaujouan
Additional contact information
Zuzanna Brzozowska: Vienna University of Economics and Business
Eva Beaujouan: Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, OeAW, University of Vienna)

European Journal of Population, 2021, vol. 37, issue 2, No 5, 405-416

Abstract: Abstract The use of fertility intention questions to study individual childbearing behaviour has developed rapidly in recent decades. In Europe, the Generations and Gender Surveys are the main sources of cross-national data on fertility intentions and their realisation. This study investigates how an inconsistent implementation of a question about wanting a child now affects the cross-country comparability of intentions to have a child within the next three years and their realisation. We conduct our analysis separately for women and men at prime and late reproductive ages in Austria, France, Italy and Poland. The results show that the overall share of respondents intending to have a child at some point in their life is similar in all four analysed countries. However, once the time horizon and the degree of certainty of fertility intentions are included, substantial cross-country differences appear, particularly in terms of proceptive behaviour and, consequently, the realisation of fertility intentions. We conclude that the inconsistent questionnaire adaptation makes it very difficult to assess the role of country context in the realisation of childbearing intentions.

Keywords: Fertility intentions; Realisation of fertility intentions; Generations and gender survey; Cross-national survey comparability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10680-020-09573-x 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:37:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s10680-020-09573-x

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

DOI: 10.1007/s10680-020-09573-x

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 ().