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Cognitive ability and fertility amongst Swedish men: evidence from 18 cohorts of military conscription

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  • Martin Kolk

    (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany)

  • Kieron J. Barclay

    (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany)

Abstract

We examine the relationship between cognitive ability and childbearing patterns in contemporary Sweden using administrative register data. The topic has a long history in the social sciences and has been the topic of a large number of studies, many arguing for a negative gradient between intelligence and fertility. We link fertility histories to military conscription tests with intelligences scores for all Swedish born men born 1951 to 1967. We find an overall positive relationship between intelligence scores and fertility and that is consistent across our cohorts. The relationship is most pronounced for transition to a first child, and that men with the lowest categories of IQ-scores have the fewest children. Using fixed effects models we additionally control for all factors that are shared across siblings, and after such adjustments we find a stronger positive relationship between IQ and fertility. Furthermore, we find a positive gradient within groups of different lengths of education. Compositional differences of this kind are therefore not responsible for the positive gradient we observe - instead the relationship is even stronger after controlling for both educational careers and parental background factors. In our models where we compare brothers to one another we find that relative to men with IQ 100, the group with the lowest category of cognitive ability have 0.58 fewer children, and men with the highest category have 0.14 more children.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Kolk & Kieron J. Barclay, 2017. "Cognitive ability and fertility amongst Swedish men: evidence from 18 cohorts of military conscription," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2017-020, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2017-020
    DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2017-020
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. B. Devlin & Michael Daniels & Kathryn Roeder, 1997. "The heritability of IQ," Nature, Nature, vol. 388(6641), pages 468-471, July.
    2. Martin Kolk, 2014. "Multigenerational transmission of family size in contemporary Sweden," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 68(1), pages 111-129, March.
    3. Johan Surkyn & Ron Lesthaeghe, 2004. "Value Orientations and the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) in Northern, Western and Southern Europe: An Update," Demographic Research Special Collections, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 3(3), pages 45-86.
    4. Vegard Skirbekk, 2008. "Fertility trends by social status," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 18(5), pages 145-180.
    5. Martin Dribe & Lucia Pozzi & Michel Oris, 2014. "Socioeconomic status and fertility before, during, and after the demographic transition: An introduction," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 31(7), pages 161-182.
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    Cited by:

    1. Marika Jalovaara & Gerda Neyer & Gunnar Andersson & Johan Dahlberg & Lars Dommermuth & Peter Fallesen & Trude Lappegård, 2019. "Education, Gender, and Cohort Fertility in the Nordic Countries," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 35(3), pages 563-586, July.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sweden; fertility; intelligence; men; military service;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

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