Family influence in fertility: A longitudinal analysis of sibling correlations in first birth risk and completed fertility among Swedish men and women

Johan Dahlberg
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Johan Dahlberg: Stockholms Universitet

Demographic Research, 2013, vol. 29, issue 9, 233-246

Abstract: Background: The intergenerational transmission of fertility has received much attention in demography. This has been done by estimating the correlation between parents’ and offsprings’ fertility. An alternative method that provides a more comprehensive account of the role of family background - sibling correlations - has not been used before. Objective: I estimate the overall importance of family background on entry into parenthood and completed fertility and whether it changed over time. Furthermore, I compare the intergenerational correlation in completed fertility with corresponding sibling correlations. Methods: Brother and sister correlations in first birth hazard and in final family size were estimated using multi-level event-history and multi-level linear regression on Swedish longitudinal register data. Results: The overall variation in fertility that can be explained by family of origin is approximately 15%-25% for women and 10%-15% for men. The overall importance of the family of origin has not changed over the approximately twenty birth cohorts that were studied (1940-63 for women, 1940-58 for men). Parents’ completed fertility accounts for only a small share of the total family background effect on completed fertility. Conclusions: This study contributes to the existing understanding of intergenerational transition of fertility, both methodologically, by introducing a new and powerful method to study the overall importance of family of origin, and substantially, by estimating the overall importance of family of origin and ist development over time. A non-negligible proportion of the variation in fertility can be attributed to family of origin and this effect has remained stable over twenty birth cohorts.

Keywords: sibling correlation; family background; intergenerational transmission of fertility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:demres:v:29:y:2013:i:9

DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2013.29.9

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