MPC Member Publications

This database contains a listing of population studies publications written by MPC Members. Anyone can add a publication by an MPC student, faculty, or staff member to this database; new citations will be reviewed and approved by MPC administrators.

Full Citation

Title: The impact of kin availability, parental religiosity, and nativity on fertility differentials in the late 19th-century United States.

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2017

ISSN: 1435-9871

DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2017.37.34

PMID: 29720893

Abstract: METHODS Most quantitative research on fertility decline in the United States ignores the potential impact of cultural and familial factors. We rely on new complete-count data from the 1880 U.S. census to construct couple-level measures of nativity/ethnicity, religiosity, and kin availability. We include these measures with a comprehensive set of demographic, economic, and contextual variables in Poisson regression models of net marital fertility to assess their relative importance. We construct models with and without area fixed effects to control for unobserved heterogeneity. CONTRIBUTION All else being equal, we find a strong impact of nativity on recent net marital fertility. Fertility differentials among second generation couples relative to the native-born white population of native parentage were in most cases less than half of the differential observed among first generation immigrants, suggesting greater assimilation to native-born American childbearing norms. Our measures of parental religiosity and familial propinquity indicated a more modest impact on marital fertility. Couples who chose biblical names for their children had approximately 3% more children than couples relying on secular names while the presence of a potential mother-in-law in a nearby households was associated with 2% more children. Overall, our results demonstrate the need for more inclusive models of fertility behavior that include cultural and familial covariates.

Url: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29720893

Url: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=PMC5926193

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Hacker, David J; Roberts, Evan W

Periodical (Full): Demographic research

Issue: 34

Volume: 37

Pages: 1049-1080

Countries:

IPUMS NHGIS NAPP IHIS ATUS Terrapop