Does Fertility Behavior Spread among Friends?

Abstract

By integrating insights from economic and sociological theories, this article investigates whether and through which mechanisms friends’ fertility behavior affects an individual’s transition to parenthood. By exploiting the survey design of the Add Health data, our strategy allows us to properly identify interaction effects and distinguish them from selection and contextual effects. We use a series of discrete-time event history models with random effects at the dyadic level. Results show that, net of confounding effects, a friend’s childbearing increases an individual’s risk of becoming a parent. We find a short-term, curvilinear effect: an individual’s risk of childbearing starts increasing after a friend’s childbearing, reaches its peak approximately two years later, and then decreases.

Is the Association Between Education and Fertility Postponement Causal? The Role of Family Background Factors

“…Previous investigations have pointed to SES of the parents (van Doorn et al 2011) andparental demographic behavior (e.g., Lappegård andRønsen 2005;Marini 1985;Nisén and Myrskylä 2014;Rijken and Liefbroer 2009). Recent investigations also show that social ties, such as friends (Balbo and Barban 2014), influence fertility timing and that siblings influence each other (Lyngstad and Prskawetz 2010). Given that measured family characteristics typically account for only a small part of the explained variance (e.g., Nisén and Myrskylä 2014) and that parents are important in choosing whom to befriend and date, further study of social and network dynamics (of the family) is one way to better understand the role of the family in fertility behavior.…”

Social networks and fertility

“…In an analysis of German panel data (Pairfam), Richter et al (2012) found a significant positive effect of the presence of children under age three in a person's network on his or her actual childbearing behavior, at least among eastern German respondents. Similarly, an individual's childbearing risk was shown to increase when a friend had a child in analyses of the U.S. National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health dataset (Balbo and Barban 2012;Balbo, Barban, and Mills 2013). Moreover, a very recent analysis of data from the Bamberg Cohabitors and Marital Couples Panel (Lois and Arránz Becker 2013) indicated that, for people under age 28, the number of parents in ego's network affects the likelihood of a first birth.…”

Types of social networks and the transition to parenthood

“…The effect on first births was positive but not significant. Strong cross-friend effects on the transition rate to parenthood were also found in analyses of data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Balbo and Barban 2014). Pink, Leopold, and Engelhardt (2014) reported social interaction effects on fertility among women employed in the same firm.…”