Social Capital Related to Fertility: Theoretical Foundations and Empirical Evidence from Bulgaria

Abstract

Interpersonal relationships of support have been found to be an important factor in individual fertility intentions in Central and Eastern European countries. The foundations of this positive influence have not been well explored to date, however. We present a theoretical discussion on exchange-based social capital and argue that processes of interpersonal exchange are relevant for reproductive decisions when they provide access to resources that help to reduce the costs of having children and stabilise the economic situation of a household. Data from 2002 on the fertility intentions of 2,016 Bulgarian women support our argument. The availability of important and substantive resources has a positive impact on women's intentions to have a second or third child and their timing of having a first or second child. The embededness in kin-based exchange systems of indirect reciprocity shows similar positive effects and highlights especially the significance of parents as a source of intergenerational transfers and support.

Attitudes, Norms and Perceived Behavioural Control: Explaining Fertility Intentions in Bulgaria

“…For what concerns subjective norms, key factors here seems to be (1) social capital (Bühler 2008;Bühler and Philipov 2005)-with exchange of help sustaining positive subjective norms; (2) sequencing norms on the other side, with relevant others pushing women and men who are in education not to have a child (Blossfeld and Huinink 1991); (3) religiosity, consistently with interpretations emphasising the importance of secularisation, such as the ''Second Demographic Transition'' theory. Another factor that is consistently (and negatively) associated with subjective norms is disorientation (Philipov et al 2006).…”

“…Reher (1998), Micheli (2000) and Dalla Zuanna (2001) underline the importance of social networks characterised by strong family ties in shaping demographic choices in Southern Europe. Philipov et al (2006) discuss the impact of social capital on fertility intentions in Bulgaria and Hungary, and Bühler and Philipov (2005) give an extensive theoretical discussion on social capital related to social network and on its significance for the formation of fertility intentions in low fertility contexts (see also Bühler 2008).…”

“…The variable used in the models is inversely related to disorientation. The final variable is exchange of help as a measure of social capital (for details see Bühler and Philipov 2005). This variable combines ''help received'' by others and ''help given'' to others.…”

The influence of the family network on the realisation of fertility intentions

“…Previous research on the intention-behaviour gap in fertility has focused on micro-level individual and macro-level institutional characteristics, which has been at the expense of recognising vital meso-level family networks. Following the literature on personal networks (Kohler et al 2001;Bühler and Philipov 2005;Bernardi et al 2007) and focussing in particular on the family, we can identify two primary and complementary roles of the family network in shaping an individual's fertility choices (Balbo and Mills 2011). The first one, which is the more stable aspect, is the family as a source of social capital.…”

“…Previous research has focused on the impact of social capital on fertility intentions (e.g. Bühler and Philipov 2005;Philipov et al 2006), but not on the impact of the realisation of these intentions. Although already a few studies have examined the impact of cross-sibling effects or sibling interaction on fertility behaviour (Bernardi 2003), they have focused on the number of nieces and nephews in relation to the number of children (Axinn et al 1994) or on an individual's fertility timing (Lyngstad and Prskawetz 2010) and not on the realisation of fertility intentions.…”