Societal Pessimism and Trajectories of Fertility Expectations

Katya Ivanova , Tilburg University

In recent decades, fear and discontent have increasingly become salient traits of Western societies. In this contribution, I argue that societal pessimism is likely to affect individuals’ life course expectations. I address two research questions: 1) Can we identify different developmental trajectories of fertility expectations in reproductively aged adults? 2) Is there an association between self-reported societal pessimism and the different trajectories of fertility expectations? I use data from the Dutch Longitudinal Internet studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel. The analytical sample is restricted to reproductively aged adults at first observation, who have one or fewer children (N = 3,076). The key predictor of interest - societal pessimism - was operationalized using 18 questions, administered at first wave of observation. The respondents were asked to assess the living conditions - in different domains - of the next generation, using a scale from 1 = much worse than today to 7 = much better than today. The fertility expectation trajectories are derived based on the respondents’ annual response to the question “Do you think you will have [more] children in the future?” (answer options “Yes”, “No’’, and “I don't know”). First, a joint latent class model will be estimated using Latent GOLD in order to identify trajectories of fertility expectations, while simultaneously modelling the transition to a(nother) birth. Subsequently, the resulting classes of fertility expectations will be used as an outcome variable in a multinomial logistic regression, with societal pessimism at the start of observation as key predictor.

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 Presented in Session P1. Fertility, Family, Life Course