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Childrearing Responsibility and Stepfamily Fertility in Finland and Austria

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Abstract

We investigate the hypothesis that the propensity of a step family couple to have a shared child is inversely related to the responsibility for rearing pre-union children. We compare effects of coresident pre-union children to those of nonresident, and effects of the woman's children to those of the man's. Shared children and stepchildren reduce the risk of a birth to a couple, and the reduction is larger for each shared child than for a stepchild. We find larger effects of coresident pre-union children than of nonresident children, and larger effects of a woman's pre-union children than of a man's. The differences are more pronounced in Austria where public support for childrearing and gender equality is lower than in Finland. Our study demonstrates that in addition to the number of pre-union children, coresidence and parentage of pre-union children also need to be considered in future fertility research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Konrad-Zuse-Strasse 1, D-18057, Rostock, Germany (author for correspondence, e-mail

    Andres Vikat & Alexia Prskawetz

  2. Department of Sociology, and Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Elizabeth Thomson

Authors
  1. Andres Vikat
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  2. Elizabeth Thomson
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  3. Alexia Prskawetz
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Correspondence to Andres Vikat.

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Vikat, A., Thomson, E. & Prskawetz, A. Childrearing Responsibility and Stepfamily Fertility in Finland and Austria. European Journal of Population 20, 1–21 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:EUJP.0000014536.56286.41

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:EUJP.0000014536.56286.41

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