The Influence of Informal Work and Subjective Weil-Being on Childbearing in Post-Soviet Russia

摘要

THE DECLINE TO very low fertility, defined as a total fertility rate (TFR) below 1.3 births per woman, has been of major concern in recent demographic literature (Kohler, Billari, and Ortega 2002; Caldwell and Schindlmayr 2003; Billari and Kohler 2004; Morgan 2003); fertility rates at these levels lead to negative rates of population growth that are difficult to reverse (Lutz, O'Neill, and Scherbov 2003). The focus of research has primarily been the postponement of first births in Western Europe andthe increase in childlessness (Sobotka 2004; Bongaarts 2002; see also "Conference on postponement of childbearing in Europe" 2005). Little attention has been paid to countries that have achieved very low fertility through the postponement of second and higher-order births while maintaining a relatively early and universal pattern of first births (Perelli-Harris 2005). The questions addressed in these two situations are very different. In societies that have been postponing the entry into parenthood, researchers have examined explanations of uncertainty in young adulthood (Kohler, Billari, and Ortega 2002; Blossfeld 2005) or shifts in values (Surkyn and Lesthaeghe 2004). Yet in lowest-low-fertility societies that are postponing or eliminating second births, the focus should not be on entry into parenthood, which is still relatively young and near-universal, but on why people choose to have or not to have additional children.