Economic resources and parity among US women: A conjoint experiment on preferred family scenarios

Background: Economically insecure conditions may be driving young people’s decisions to delay, forgo, or reduce childbearing. Yet establishing a causal link between economic resources and fertility is methodologically fraught. One approach has been to use survey experiments to manipulate hypothetical economic conditions and gauge respondents’ fertility preferences. Objective: Unlike survey experiments that manipulate economic circumstances and then ask about fertility preferences, our experiment varies both hypothetical economic circumstances and hypothetical parity to test the hypothesis that US women will prefer family scenarios with more (compared to fewer) children under conditions of high economic resources and with fewer (compared to more) children under conditions of low economic resources. Methods: In an online conjoint survey experiment with a nationally representative sample of US women aged 18–35 (n = 1,794), respondents chose between different family scenarios comprised of randomly varied attributes, including parity and economic resources. We examine how these two attributes interact to predict preferred family scenarios. Results: There was no evidence that respondents preferred family scenarios with more (compared to fewer) children under conditions of high economic resources or preferred family scenarios with fewer (compared to more) children under conditions of low economic resources. Contribution: We provide new experimental evidence about whether economic resources and parity interact to predict preferred family scenarios. Our findings are consistent with scholarship suggesting that although economic factors shape decisions about family life, the rational-actor framework is insufficient for understanding contemporary US fertility declines.