High Fertility in City Suburbs: Compositional or Contextual Effects?

H. Kulu () and P. J. Boyle ()
Additional contact information
H. Kulu: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
P. J. Boyle: University of St. Andrews

European Journal of Population, 2009, vol. 25, issue 2, No 2, 157-174

Abstract: Abstract Fertility rates are known to be higher in city suburbs. One interpretation is that the suburban ‘context’ influences the behaviour of individuals who reside there while an alternative is that the ‘composition’ of the suburban population explains the higher fertility levels. Furthermore, suburban in-migrants who intend to have children may have a significant influence on suburban fertility rates. Using Finnish longitudinal register data we show that fertility rates are higher in the suburbs and rural areas and lower in the cities. Fertility variation across these residential contexts decreases significantly after controlling for women’s demographic and socio-economic characteristics. However, it does not disappear entirely suggesting that the local context may have some influence on fertility. While movers to suburbs do display higher fertility levels than non-migrant residents, their overall impact is not great because they form a small share of the suburban population.

Keywords: Fertility; Migration; Residential mobility; Urban; suburban and rural; Event history analysis; Finland; Fécondité; Migration; Mobilité résidentielle; Urbain; suburbain et rural; Analyse biographique; Finlande (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10680-008-9163-9 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:25:y:2009:i:2:d:10.1007_s10680-008-9163-9

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

DOI: 10.1007/s10680-008-9163-9

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 ().