Fertility Differences between Married and Cohabiting Couples: A Switching Regression Analysis

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Fertility Differences between Married and Cohabiting Couples: A Switching Regression Analysis

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Junfu Zhang () (Clark University and IZA)
Xue Song () (Thomson Healthcare)

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Junfu Zhang

Abstract

Little is known about why cohabiting couples have fewer children than married couples. We explore the factors that explain the difference in fertility between these two groups using a switching regression analysis, which enables us to quantify the contribution of different factors through a decomposition of the difference. We find that married couples have more children than cohabiting couples primarily because marriage provides stronger incentives for specialization in household production. Unobserved self-selection plays a less important role.

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Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number 3245.

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Length: 34 pages
Date of creation: Dec 2007
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3245

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

NEP-ALL-2008-01-12 (All new papers)

References listed on IDEAS
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William H. Greene, 1997. "FIML Estimation of Sample Selection Models for Count Data," Working Papers 97-02, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
Becker, Gary S & Lewis, H Gregg, 1973. "On the Interaction between the Quantity and Quality of Children," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(2), pages S279-88, Part II, . [Downloadable!] (restricted)
William H. Greene, 1995. "Sample Selection in the Poisson Regression Model," Working Papers 95-06, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.

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