Social policies, separation, and second birth spacing in Western Europe

Abstract

This paper studies postseparation fertility behavior. The aim is to investigate whether, and if so how, separation affects second birth spacing in Western European countries.\ud This analysis makes use of rich survey data from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, as well as from Finnish register data. We thus cover the behavior of a large proportion of the population of Western Europe. We also use descriptive measures, such as Kaplan‒Meier survival functions and cumulative incidence curves. In the multivariate analysis, we employ event history modeling to show how education relates to postseparation fertility behavior. There are large differences in postseparation fertility behavior across European countries. For Spain and Italy, we find that only a negligibly small proportion of the population have a second child after separating from the other parent of the firstborn child. The countries with the highest proportion of second children with a new partner are the United Kingdom, Germany, and Finland. In all countries, separation after first birth leads to a sharp increase in the birth interval between first and second births. \ud Our study is a contribution to the demographic literature that aims at understanding birth spacing patterns in Western Europe. Furthermore, we draw attention to the role of postseparation policies in explaining country differences in fertility behavior in contemporary societies

Childbearing Across Partnerships in Finland and Germany

“…Similar findings are reported by Manlove et al (2008). Kreyenfeld et al (2017) examined the transition rates to the second child in seven European countries. They controlled for partnership status with a time-varying covariate that distinguished persons in on-going unions, persons in new partnerships, and singles.…”

A spatial perspective on the Nordic fertility decline: the role of economic and social uncertainty in fertility trends

“…Expectations on family structure and divorce can vary by region. Regions with higher populations of separated individuals are expected to have lower levels of fertility (Hart 2019) if separated individuals do not repartner (Kreyenfeld et al 2017). The fertility of this nonpartnered group is expected to be different from that of never-partnered individuals, since never-partnered individuals may vary depending on the share of persons who are not interested in a partnership.…”

Oh half-brother, where art thou? The boundaries of full- and half-sibling interaction

“…Between-partner birth spacing, however, most often includes the process of union separation and/or re-partnering. This dynamic favors greater birth spacing between half-siblings (Kreyenfeld et al 2017). In contrast to full-siblings, half-siblings are often separated following union dissolution.…”

“…Half-siblingship is the product of MPF and from the parents' perspective is therefore preceded by separation, single parenthood, or the death of a partner. As rates of divorce and single parenthood differ greatly between countries, the occurrence of halfsiblingship is very varied (Kreyenfeld et al 2017). In the United States, every second child born out of wedlock to urban mothers, every fifth child experiencing parental divorce, and every third child born to mothers on welfare will have a half sibling at some point (Carlson and Furstenberg 2006;Cancian and Meyer 2006).…”