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Who delays childbearing? The relationships between fertility, education and personality traits

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  • Lara Tavares

Abstract

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, this paper assesses the influence of personality traits on timing of motherhood and investigates whether, and in what way, personality traits can explain the differences in maternity timing between more and less educated women. We estimate a log-logistic model of the time to first child birth and show that there is a statistically significant relationship between the Big Five personality traits and timing to motherhood. The results also show that within the more educated group, women who have an average to high score on Openness have lower hazards of childbirth.

Suggested Citation

  • Lara Tavares, 2008. "Who delays childbearing? The relationships between fertility, education and personality traits," Working Papers 009, "Carlo F. Dondena" Centre for Research on Social Dynamics (DONDENA), Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi.
    • Handle: RePEc:don:donwpa:009
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    File URL: ftp://ftp.dondena.unibocconi.it/WorkingPapers/Dondena_WP009.pdf
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    Cited by:

    1. Anna Baranowska & Anna Matysiak, 2011. "Does parenthood increase happiness? Evidence for Poland," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 9(1), pages 307-325.
    2. Paul Mathews & Rebecca Sear, 2013. "Family and Fertility: Kin Influence on the Progression to a Second Birth in the British Household Panel Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(3), pages 1-10, March.
    3. Jessica Nisén & Pekka Martikainen & Jaakko Kaprio & Karri Silventoinen, 2013. "Educational Differences in Completed Fertility: A Behavioral Genetic Study of Finnish Male and Female Twins," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(4), pages 1399-1420, August.
    4. Shelly Lundberg, 2012. "Personality and marital surplus," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-21, December.
    5. LUPPI, FRANCESCA & Migheli, Matteo & Pronzato, Chiara, 2023. "Re-partnering and fertility," SocArXiv ejt8u, Center for Open Science.
    6. Le Moglie, Marco & Mencarini, Letizia & Rapallini, Chiara, 2015. "Is it just a matter of personality? On the role of subjective well-being in childbearing behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 453-475.
    7. Anna Matysiak & Letizia Mencarini & Daniele Vignoli, 2015. "Work-family Conflict Moderates the Impact of Childbearing on Subjective Well-Being," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 435, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    8. Josten, Cecily & Lordan, Grace, 2020. "The interaction between personality and health policy: Empirical evidence from the UK smoking bans," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 38(C).
    9. Shelly Lundberg, 2011. "Psychology and Family Economics," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 12(s1), pages 66-81, May.
    10. Kesavayuth, Dusanee & Rosenman, Robert E. & Zikos, Vasileios, 2015. "Personality and health satisfaction," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 64-73.
    11. Francesca Luppi, 2016. "When is the Second One Coming? The Effect of Couple’s Subjective Well-Being Following the Onset of Parenthood," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 32(3), pages 421-444, August.
    12. Blanca Zuluaga, 2018. "Early childbearing and the option to postpone," Revista Cuadernos de Economia, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, FCE, CID, vol. 37(73).
    13. Jessica Nisén & Mikko Myrskylä & Karri Silventoinen & Pekka Martikainen, 2014. "Effect of family background on the educational gradient in lifetime fertility of Finnish women born 1940-50," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 68(3), pages 321-337, November.
    14. W. O'Donnell, Alexander & Wake, Alexandra, 2025. "Future expectations amongst young people in the United Kingdom: prevalence and patterns across generations and socioeconomic groups," ISER Working Paper Series 2025-04, Institute for Social and Economic Research.

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