Peers and Fertility Preferences: An Empirical Investigation of the Role of Neighbours, Religion and Education

Peer Effects and Fertility Preferences in China: Evidence From the China Labor-Force Dynamics Survey

“…We confine our analysis to data from the 2014 and 2016 follow-up interviews because these collected information on the ideal number of children. Given our study focus, we restrict our sample to women in the common reproductive age range of 18-49 (cf., Chen & Wang, 2015;Mishra & Parasnis, 2017) for whom detailed information is available on demographics, household socioeconomics, and the ideal number of children specified by the respondent. The result is a final sample of 3,645 observations, 1,942 for 2014 and 1,703 for 2016.…”

“…As is common in the peer-effects literature (e.g., Gwozdz et al, 2019;Nie, Sousa-Poza, & He, 2015), we define peers as all women in the same community (c.f. Mishra & Parasnis, 2017) and then derive our community-level peer fertility rate as the ratio of the number of living children in the community to the total number of these peers. In doing so, we use the actual rather than preferred number of children because only the former is observable.…”

“…The intentions of childless respondents, in particular, appear to have been positively impacted by network partners in a similar stage of their reproductive biographies or who had already taken the step of having a first child. Similarly, Mishra and Parasnis (2017), using data from the 1992/1993-2005/2006 waves of India's National Family Health Survey, finds that a one unit increase in the observed fertility of neighborhood peers reduces the likelihood of preferring 1 child or 2 children by 1% or 6.6%, respectively, but increases the probability of having 3 or 4 children by 1.2% or 3.8%.…”

“…Although in a simple economic framework, fertility is deemed to be an individual or household decision driven by individual preferences or intentions, in reality it is also shaped by societal norms or perceptions (Mishra & Parasnis, 2017). That is, social decisions, unlike pure economic decisions, are made within social networks whose member interactions may be the key element in choice (Akerlof, 1997).…”

Retraditionalization as a pathway to escape lowest-low fertility? Characteristics and prospects of the Eastern European “baby boom”

“…More research is needed to explore whether perhaps also the recuperation among older cohorts after the crisis-induced postponement had an effect on the cohort fertility increases among succeeding cohorts. In recent years, evidence has mounted that fertility events in an individual's social surroundings can influence own fertility decisions (Lois and Becker 2014;Mishra and Parasnis 2017). In a context in which many older women are recuperating postponed fertility, this will likely positively affect the frequency with which younger women experience births among their family members, coworkers, or other social contacts.…”