Normative or economic behavior? Fertility and women’s employment in Israel

Exploring Sequences: A Graphical Tool Based on Multi-Dimensional Scaling

“…It is interesting to compare what emerges from our plots with the results that were reported by Ekert-Jaffe and Stier (2006), who used bivariate probit models to study the influence of education, religiousness and ethnicity on the timing of the birth of second and third children and on work. They found that ethnicity and religiousness have an influence on the number of children and on the spacing between births, and that work activity does not influence the family variables.…”

The Attitude Toward Voluntary Childlessness in Europe: Cultural and Institutional Explanations

“…It has been suggested, however, that this assumption is time and space dependent and may not apply equally well to all societies or to all historical time points within a society. Alternatively, the idea has been put forward that the better the opportunities for combining parenthood and employment—such as availability of high‐quality public or reasonably priced private child‐care facilities—the more likely it is that women will decide to have children and a career at the same time (Adsera, 2011; Ekert‐Jaffe & Stier, 2009; Liefbroer & Corijn, 1999; Oppenheimer, 1997). For instance, the northern European countries, which have better institutional child‐care arrangements and high female labor force participation, have relatively high birth rates compared with central and eastern European countries, where low birth rates have been observed following the collapse of communism and the development of a capitalist market economy (Sobotka, 2004).…”

Are two a family? Older single mothers assisted by sperm donation and their children revisited.

“…Although the need to become a mother in Israel is obvious (Remennick, 2000), it is not clear whether the mothers in the sample opt for more children because of their own wishes, their children’s desire, or societal pressure to have larger families. Whatever is the reason for the desire to have a larger family than a unit of mother and child, considering that only 5% of the Israeli women aged 40–65 were childless in 2004, and 61% had three children (Ekert‐Yaffe & Stier, 2009), the findings of this follow‐up study show that in Israel, unlike in other developed countries, family size depends more on cultural than economic determinants even in older single‐parent families. The desire and attempts of the mothers in the sample to give birth to additional children using assisted conception demonstrate the divergence in the fertility patterns of Israeli society from other developed countries.…”