The Postponement of Childbearing, Completed Fertility and Subjective Well-being

1. The Postponement of Childbearing, Completed Fertility and Subjective Well-being Hans-Peter Kohler Axel Skytthe and Kaare Christensen University of Pennsylvania University of Southern Denmark, Odense

2. Concerns about delayed childbearing • Demographic effects • Parity progression ratios • Completed fertility • Subjective well-being derived from children and parenting • Interactions between motivation for parenting and age

3. Age at first birth and fertility • What is the effect of a “late start” in parenthood on completed fertility? • Postponement effect • relative (absolute) decline in fertility resulting from a 1-year delay in 1st birth

4. Relevance • Age at first birth and completed fertility are the “cornerstones” that theories of fertility behavior need to capture • Forecasting of cohort fertility: age at first birth is a potential early indicator of completed fertility • Adjustment of the TFR: is there a “pure postponement” of fertility? • Data: Monozygotic (identical) twins born 1945--65 in Denmark (register-based data)

5. Determinants of postponement effect • Postponement effect is strong if • Age-related child-costs are relevant • Costs of children increase with human capital • Delaying childbirth has small economic returns

6. Regress completed fertility on age at first birth • Simple, but potential bias of coefficients • Overestimated • Selection with respect to fertility desires or fecundity • Underestimated • Selection with respect to abilities and “potential”, marriage market success, etc.

7. MZ twins from Danish Twin Registry Can control for • characteristics of parental household • genetic dispositions • “ability” and returns to education, etc. • Fixed effect regression(within MZ twin estimator)

8. Estimates of postonement effect • Cohorts 1945-68 • Logarithm of fertility measured at age 38 • Postponement effect measures relative decline in completed fertility per additional year of delayed fertility

9. 2 Effects • Postponement effect has declined across cohorts • Postponement effectincreases at later desired fertility • Compensating reduction in PE, particularly for women

10. Conclusions I • Effect of age-at-first birth on subsequent and completed fertility is underestimated by standard analyses • Change in postponement effect is underestimated; the effect is weakening over time, especially for males, but effect remains relevant • Changing selectivity over time • Dependence on desired onset of fertility for females • Delayed childbearing reinforces postponement-fertility connection

11. Happiness & Fertility

12. Children and Well-being Effect of „Fertility“ on subjective well-being (0 = Not particularly / not statisfied; 1 = rather satisfied; 2 = Very satisfied) Further Results • no change within age group 25-45, but children loose relevance in the age range 50-70 years • negative effect of step children for men • no effect of separation/divorce from partner of first child • persistent negative effect of early first births (age ≤ 21) for women • different correlation von unobserved characteristics mij with fertility behaviors + p ≤ .10; * ≤ .05; ** p ≤ .01;

13. Well-being and postponement • No effect of postponement on well-being in later adulthood across wide range of childbearing effects • Strong negative effect of “young onset” of parenthood

14. Conclusions • children and „Happiness“: • dominant effect of first child • negative effect (women) and no effect (men) of additional children • no additional effect of children after controlling for current partnership for men (but effect exists for women) • sex-preferences: first-born boys make men happier than first-born girls (no difference for women) • negative effect of step children for men (women are indifferent) • persistent negative effect of early first births for women • Implications for fertility and family theories • Implications for understanding low fertility in Europe