Do People Have Reproductive Goals? Constructive Preferences and the Discovery of Desired Family Size

Máire Ní Bhrolcháin () and Éva Beaujouan
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Máire Ní Bhrolcháin: University of Southampton, Faculty of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences
Éva Beaujouan: Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, VID/ÖAW, WU)

Chapter Chapter 3 in Analytical Family Demography, 2019, pp 27-56 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The frequency of uncertainty in response to survey questions on fertility expectations is relatively high. This is inconsistent with the classical rational choice model implicit in much demographic research. Whether for this or other reasons, the phenomenon is by and large overlooked. Uncertainty in relation to fertility is, we suggest, genuine rather than the result of faulty measurement or poorly motivated responses. Its relatively high frequency requires that it is accounted for in any theory of fertility decision making. Adapting ideas from behavioral economics, psychology, and political science we propose an alternative theoretical approach in which fertility intentions and preferences are thought of as constructed. Preferences are constructed when they are not drawn from a stored memory but assembled on the spot from information accessible at the time; reports of such preferences can be very sensitive to context. In this approach, uncertainty is not anomalous and some enduring apparent contradictions in survey findings on fertility intentions, expectations and preferences are explicable. Ideas in political science have the potential to enhance our understanding of responses to survey questions on preferences and intentions. Preference construction theory could provide an avenue to a better understanding of fertility preferences. Desired family size may, we suggest, be a discovery rather than a goal. Establishing the nature, origin and operation of fertility preferences is essential to answering the question whether fertility differentials and trends reflect choice or constraint or some mixture of the two.

Keywords: Fertility intentions; Fertility preferences; Fertility expectations; Desired family size; Ideal family size; Reproductive attitudes; Constructed preferences; Preference construction; Uncertainty; Ambiguity; Ambivalence; Rational choice; Uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ssdmcp:978-3-319-93227-9_3

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-93227-9_3

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