Giornate di Studio sulla Popolazione (Popdays), Giornate di Studio sulla Popolazione 2019

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I’ve Changed My Mind. Intentions To Be Childless, their Stability and Their Realization in the Short-term
Elisa Brini, Marco Albertini

##manager.scheduler.building##: Velodromo - Bocconi University
##manager.scheduler.room##: N01
Date: 2019-01-25 02:00 PM – 03:30 PM
Last modified: 2018-12-26

Abstract


Despite the growing interest in explaining why in Western societies people have few children or do not have children at all, factors affecting voluntary childlessness remain poorly understood. This paper sheds light on this by focusing on how positive and negative intentions to have children vary in the extent to which they are realised. Building upon the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991), a tight link between intentions and behaviour is assumed in the case of negative fertility intentions, which leads us to analyse the extent to which intentions to remain childless are stable in the short-term and the extent to which men and women realise planned intentions to be childless. Data from the Generation and Gender Survey and its follow-up survey allow us to contribute to the literature in a twofold perspective. First, we provide new insights about the most important factors that inhibit or enable the realisation of negative fertility intentions, by showing how both socio-demographic and psychological aspects play a significant role in the realisation of planned childlessness. Secondly, we discuss the predictive power of fertility intentions in the short-run, by showing how short-term negative fertility intentions are more reliable than positive ones.


Keywords


childlessness, fertility intentions, ggs, theory of planned behavior