Education and the Transition to Fatherhood: the Role of Selection into Union

Autor(en)

A. Trimarchi, J. Van Bavel

Abstrakt

Although advanced education has been found to be consistently associated with a later transition to parenthood for women, findings about education and the transition to parenthood have been much less consistent for men, and no stylized fact has emerged from the literature. We argue that the inconsistency of findings for men is due to the fact that the selection process involved in union formation has been disregarded in earlier studies. We hypothesize that men’s educational attainment consistently and positively affects the transition to fatherhood via higher rates of union formation. We apply multiprocess event-history analysis to data from the Generations and Gender Surveys for 10 European countries. Our results show indeed a consistent positive effect of education on the transition to fatherhood, but it operates chiefly through selection into union. Failing to account for this selection process leads to a major underestimation of the salience of education for the transition to fatherhood.

Organisation(en)

Externe Organisation(en)

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Journal

Demography

Band

54

Seiten

119-144

Anzahl der Seiten

26

ISSN

0070-3370

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-016-0533-3

Publikationsdatum

02-2017

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

504006 Demographie, 509013 Sozialstatistik

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Demography

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/ae15d5cd-e11f-46e4-b3a8-3a57175817fc