The impact of kin availability, parental religiosity, and nativity on fertility differentials in the late 19th-century United States
The impact of kin availability, parental religiosity, and nativity on fertility differentials in the late 19th-century United States
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DOI：
10.4054/demres.2017.37.34
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发表时间：
2017-10-13
影响因子：
2.1
通讯作者：
Roberts, Evan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hacker, J. David;Roberts, Evan
大多数关于美国生育率下降的定量研究忽视了文化和家庭因素的潜在影响。我们依靠1880年美国人口普查的新的完整计数数据来构建出生/种族，宗教信仰和亲属可用性的夫妇水平的措施。我们将这些措施与一套全面的人口，经济和背景变量的Poisson回归模型的净婚姻生育率，以评估其相对重要性。我们构建了有和没有区域固定效应的模型来控制未观察到的异质性。贡献在其他条件相同的情况下，我们发现出生对最近的净婚姻生育率有很大的影响。在大多数情况下，第二代夫妇相对于本土出生的白色人口的生育率差异小于第一代移民中观察到的差异的一半，这表明更大的同化本土出生的美国生育规范。我们对父母宗教信仰和家庭亲近度的测量表明，对婚姻生育率的影响更为温和。为孩子选择圣经名字的夫妇比依赖世俗名字的夫妇多生了大约3%的孩子，而附近家庭中潜在的岳母的存在与2%的孩子有关。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明，需要更多的包容性模型的生育行为，包括文化和家庭的协变量。
METHODSMost quantitative research on fertility decline in the United States ignores the potential impact of cultural and familial factors. We rely on new complete-count data from the 1880 US census to construct couple-level measures of nativity/ethnicity, religiosity, and kin availability. We include these measures with a comprehensive set of demographic, economic, and contextual variables in Poisson regression models of net marital fertility to assess their relative importance. We construct models with and without area-fixed effects to control for unobserved heterogeneity.CONTRIBUTIONAll else being equal, we find a strong impact of nativity on recent net marital fertility. Fertility differentials among second-generation couples relative to the native-born white population of native parentage were in most cases less than half of the differential observed among first-generation immigrants, suggesting greater assimilation to native-born American childbearing norms. Our measures of parental religiosity and familial propinquity indicate a more modest impact on marital fertility. Couples who chose biblical names for their children had approximately 3% more children than couples relying on secular names, while the presence of a potential mother-in-law in a nearby household was associated with 2% more children. Overall, our results demonstrate the need for more inclusive models of fertility behavior that include cultural and familial covariates.