Fertility and Socioeconomic Gender Equality among Couples: Bayesian Analysis of Three European Countries

Beata Osiewalska, Cracow University of Economics

The association between couples’ socioeconomic characteristics and fertility has been subject to changes over the past centuries. While the gender differences have been examining quite deeply, couples’ procreative behaviors treated as a result of conflict between male and female socioeconomic features still remains an understudied topic. Thus, the aim of my research is to investigate couples’ fertility among contemporary European populations, distinguishing two states: childlessness and parenthood, with regard to the gap between partners’ socioeconomic features. Consequently, the special attention is given not only to the separate effect of male and female characteristics, but rather to the impact of the relation between partners’ socioeconomic status on their fertility. Based on the results, fertility for different couple's socioeconomic profiles are simulated and compared. Four profiles are distinguished: two of them show the differences between hyper- and hypogamous couples and the other two compare couples with high and low s-e status.