Regional Social Contexts and Individual Fertility Decisions: A Multilevel Analysis of First and Second Births in Western Germany

摘要

This paper investigates whetherand how regional social contexts influencefertility decisions of women living in westernGermany during the 1980s and 1990s. It isargued that regional opportunity structures aswell as local patterns of social interactionand culture may translate into parameters thatdirectly affect individual behaviour. Data fromthe German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) arelinked with a set of regional indicators toestimate multilevel discrete-time logit modelsfor the transition to the first and secondchild. The empirical analysis provides noevidence that fertility differentials observedat the regional level are due to autonomouscontextual effects. Rather, it is suggestedthat most of the observed regional variationresults from differences in the spatialdistribution of individual characteristics.