Does fertility behavior spread among friends?

This paper investigates how social interactions among friends shape fertility. We specifically examine whether and how friendsí fertility behaviour affects an individualís transition to parenthood. By integrating insights from economic and sociological theories, we elaborate on the mechanisms via which interactions among friends might affect an individualís risk of becoming a parent. By exploiting the survey design of the Add Health data, we follow a strategy that allows us to properly identify interaction effects and distinguish them from selection and contextual effects. We engage in a series of discrete time event history models with random effect at the dyadic level. Results show that, net of confounding effects, a friendís childbearing increases an individualís risk of becoming a parent. We find a short-term, curvilinear effect: an individualís risk of childbearing starts increasing after a friendís childbearing, it reaches its peak around two years later, and then decreases.