Gender roles and values of children: Childless Couples in East and West Germany
Abstract
Presuming that not just economic circumstances but also ideational factors influence fertility decisions, the paper examines the values of children of East and West-German childless men and women living with a partner. Based on the survey about ‘Change and Development of Family Life Forms’, a confirmatory factor analysis identifies an affective, a utility and a cost dimension of the values of children, and for West-German women an additional dimension of opportunity costs. Although East and West-German men and women differed in their values of children, hypotheses about the higher affective value of children for East Germans compared to West Germans or for women compared to men are not supported for the specific sample. The values of children varied with respondent’s labour-market position and the division of household work. An analysis of panel data for West Germany shows that for women, first-birth rates depended on the value of children and on the gender roles in the home.Download Info
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Article provided by Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany in its journal Demographic Research.
Volume (Year): 19 (2008)
Issue (Month): 39 (August)
Pages: 1451-1500
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.demogr.mpg.de/
Related research
Keywords: first birth; gender roles; Germany; value of children;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
- Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General
References
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- repec:ese:iserwp:2006-23 is not listed on IDEAS
- Almudena Sevilla-Sanz & Joost de Laat, 2007.
"Working Women, Men`s Home Time and Lowest Low Fertility,"
Economics Series Working Papers
308, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Anne Salles & Clémentine Rossier & Sara Brachet, 2010. "Understanding the long term effects of family policies on fertility: The diffusion of different family models in France and Germany," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 22(34), pages 1057-1096, June.
- Pia S. Schober, 2011. "Maternal Labor Market Return, Parental Leave Policies, and Gender Inequality in Housework," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 422, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
- Pia S. Schober, 2012. "Parental Leave Policies and Child Care Time in Couples after Childbirth," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 434, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
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