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Regular version of the site

Seminar "Fertility attitudes of highly educated youth: a factorial survey"

Event ended

IOS-IZA-HSE University International Labor Seminar will be held on Tuesday, October 19, 2021 at 16:00 (MSK, GMT+3).

Speaker: Kseniia Gatskova (IOS - Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg)

Title: Fertility attitudes of highly educated youth: a factorial survey

This study used factorial survey data from five countries to assess the factors that shape young adults' attitudes toward the ideal number of children for described couples. Continuously low fertility rates in many Asian and European countries generate an interest in understanding the fertility attitudes of young adults—and the implications for family policies. The causal impact of socioeconomic and cultural factors on the ideal number of children for couples described in the vignettes was tested using a factorial survey experiment (vignette analysis). Data were collected from Germany, Japan, Russia, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to represent five different contexts each with different economies, political regimes, cultural and religious backgrounds, and population structures. Seven vignette-level and four respondent-level factors were assumed to affect the conditional ideal number of children. The strongest predictors of the higher ideal number of children for couples described in the vignettes were income, availability of childcare, and husband's full employment. The highest average ideal number of children for described couples was observed in the UAE (2.8 children), followed by Germany (1.6 children), Ukraine and Russia (1.3 children), and Japan (1.2 children). The existing gap between public attitudes and fertility behaviors could be addressed by child-friendly policies which allow a better reconciliation of work and family life.


Joint paper with Tatiana Karabchuk (Department of Government and Society, United Arab Emirates University) and Hermann Dülmer (Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne). 

Full text of the paper

Working language is English.

Seminar will be online via Zoom

The link to join Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89634034860
Meeting ID: 896 3403 4860
Passcode: 299738


If you have questions please contact Liliya Gubaidullina (lgubajdullina@hse.ru).