Partnership Choice and Childbearing in Norway and Spain

European Journal of Population, Jun 2017

Cohabitation has, in a number of countries, become a genuine alternative to marriage. Where this occurs, will we see a convergence in fertility behavior between the two partnership options? We address this question by comparing two societies, Norway and Spain, that contrast sharply not only in the evolution of cohabitation, but also in overall birth rates and public support for families. Using the Generations and Gender Survey for Norway (2007/2008) and the most recent Fertility, Family and Values Survey for Spain (2006), we estimate a three-equation multi-process model for selection into a union and fertility in order to take into account unobserved heterogeneity. For Norway, we find a significant association between selection into either partnership type and fertility, whereas for Spain, a newcomer to cohabitation, we find a significant association between fertility and selection into marriage.

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Partnership Choice and Childbearing in Norway and Spain

Partnership Choice and Childbearing in Norway and Spain Roberta Rutigliano 0 1 Gøsta Esping-Andersen 0 1 Marriage 0 1 0 Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra , Ramon Trias y Fargas Street, 25-27, 08005 Barcelona , Spain 1 & Roberta Rutigliano Cohabitation has, in a number of countries, become a genuine alternative to marriage. Where this occurs, will we see a convergence in fertility behavior between the two partnership options? We address this question by comparing two societies, Norway and Spain, that contrast sharply not only in the evolution of cohabitation, but also in overall birth rates and public support for families. Using the Generations and Gender Survey for Norway (2007/2008) and the most recent Fertility, Family and Values Survey for Spain (2006), we estimate a three-equation multi-process model for selection into a union and fertility in order to take into account unobserved heterogeneity. For Norway, we find a significant association between selection into either partnership type and fertility, whereas for Spain, a newcomer to cohabitation, we find a significant association between fertility and selection into marriage. Simultaneous equation; Fertility; Cohabitation models; Spain; Norway 1 Introduction Demographic research has produced no clear evidence as regards the influence of partnership types on fertility. The Second Demographic Transition thesis sees cohabitation as a key marker of postmodern values which stress individualism and Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10680-017-9432-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. self-realization (Lesthaeghe 2010) . In this framework, one would assume that cohabitation is a favored option among those who are less inclined to enter into long-term and binding commitments. Historically, there is a close fit between the surge in divorce and cohabitation— although here Latin America is an exception (Laplante et al. 2015) . Cohabitation gained ground especially in high-divorce societies, like Scandinavia and France, while remaining more marginal in low-divorce settings, like Italy.1 If cohabitation represents weaker commitments, one would expect it to be associated with lower fertility. But is that necessarily the case? There are three reasons why we should question this prediction. Firstly, the link between couple (in) stability and fertility is inherently ambiguous. We would expect that stable partnerships are more likely to have children. And yet, couples may also have children as a way to shore up a shaky relationship. There is empirical support for both views (Malpas and Lambert 1993; European Commission 1997; Testa 2007) . Similar findings emerge for Germany (Berninger et al. 2011) . Earlier US studies found that the risk of relationship disruption decreases the likelihood of births (Lillard and Waite 1993; Myers 1997; Manning 2004) , and this appears also to hold for Italy and Spain (Coppola and Cesare 2008) . Union stability also predicts higher overall fertility in France (Thomson et al. 2012) and in the Netherlands (Rijken and Thomson 2011) . The ‘births induce stability’ perspective argues that childbearing, given that it is irreversible and shared, increases marital satisfaction and strengthens relationships (Lillard and Waite 1993) . This argument, too, enjoys empirical support. Relationships stabilize after the first or early higher-parity births in the USA (Waite and Lillard 1991) as well as in Italy and Spain (Coppola and Cesare 2008) . Steele et al. (2007) compare across two UK cohorts (born 1958 and 1970, respectively) and find that births solidify cohabiting relationships within the younger, but not the older, cohort (see also Rijken and Liefbroer 2009) . The second reason lies in the multifaceted nature of cohabitation. In some societies, like Germany, the USA or UK, it is largely a temporary testing ground prior to committing oneself, or simply an alternative to singlehood (Rindfuss and VandenHeuvel 1990; Hiekel et al. 2014) ; in others, like France and Scandinavia, it has become a de facto equivalent to marriage (Raley 2001; Kiernan 2002) . To this, we should add that Scandinavian cohabitation includes also a lot of ‘shacking up’ among young adults and, furthermore, cohabiters often marry after the birth of the first child. Youth emancipation from the parental home occurs exceptionally early here.2 All told, we would assume that fertility in cohabitation and marriage will begin to converge the more that cohabitation becomes normative and legally sanctioned. This is how Kiernan (2001) defines its mature state. And yet, the link between the diffusion of cohabitation and fertility may not be linear. As Perelli-Harris (2014) concludes, it is more likely curvilinear: as cohabitation becomes normatively 1 A partial exception is the USA where divorce rates are exceptionally high w (...truncated)


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Roberta Rutigliano, Gøsta Esping-Andersen. Partnership Choice and Childbearing in Norway and Spain, European Journal of Population, 2017, pp. 1-20, DOI: 10.1007/s10680-017-9432-6