Who prefers zero ? Attitudes toward childlessness in Russia and in its capital city

1. Who prefers zero?Attitudes toward childlessness in Russia and in its capital city Svetlana S. Biryukova(HSE, Russia) Alla O. Tyndik (ranepa, russia) EUROPEAN POPULATION CONFERENCE 2014

2. Results of previous research • Attained fertility level strongly depends on reproductive preferences and intentions (correlation reported since Freedman, Baumert and Bolte, 1959) • In developed countries voluntary childless women are those who drive the dynamics of childlessness (Hakim 2000). • Main drivers of childlessness growth are (De Jong and Sell 1977, Heaton et al. 1999, Mettinen 2010, Seiz 2013 …): • education level • growth in women’s economic independence (employment, equality) • Literally no quantitative studies of childlessness in Russia • No data • Not relevant until recently, universal model of 1-2 child family

3. Data and method • Micro data of the 2002 and 2010 National Censuses • De facto childless women • Include woman’s year of birth (covariate): 1935-1988 • Generation & Gender Survey, Russia (2011) • 11 183 respondents • Moscow and its Citizens Survey, Moscow (2013) • 3 109 respondents • Kaplan-Meier estimator • Survival function for the status “childless” • Cox proportional-hazards regression • Logistic regression • Zero child preferences / non-zero child preferences

4. 2002 to 2010: childlessness in Census datagrowth of eventual childlessness • Share of childless women is obviously increasing • Moscow keeps the leadership • Childless rate in Russia is still lower comparing to many European countries • What is it, postponing or childlessness?

5. 1930-s to 1980-s fertility transitionpostponing first birth more and more • 1935-1969: shift to younger ages • 1970-1988: rapid postponing • Prolonged postponing  childlessness?

6. 1950-s to 1980-s fertility transitionrelative risk of the first birth • The risk of experiencing the first birth for women born in 1988 is more than twice as low comparing to those born in 1950 • Still shows lowering trend

7. Who are Russian childless? (1)Moscow and Country on the whole • If it was entirely up to you: How many children in total do you want or rather would you have wanted? • MaCS: 17% of actually childless prefer “zero” (138/815) • GGS: 5,3%(82/1535) • Variables in regression: • sex • gender • cohabitation experience • education • income level & employment • number of siblings • opinions towards marriage and childbearing • type of settlement (city, town, village) • Some differences in predictors between samples

8. Who are Russian childless? (2)Moscow and Country on the whole

9. Who are Russian childless? (3)Moscow and Country on the whole

10. discussion • Our estimations of the childlessness level in Russia agree with those for the CEE • 15-22% for generations born in 1970 and later (Frejka, 2008) • Portraits of child-free individuals in Moscow and in Russia differ a lot now • Voluntary childlessness gradually becomes more common • Challenge for family policy Future research • New factors of childlessness in Russia: first results of qualitative research • Feature selection models

11. The research is supported bythe Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) within the project “Evaluation of population wellbeing dynamics and modeling of tax, economic and social policies effects on households” (TZ-39) and by the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Thank you! sbiryukova@hse.ru / tyndik-ao@rane.ru