Fertility in new couples, the influence of previous children: evidence from the UK

Alessandro Di Nallo, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

I present an in-depth analysis of the role of parenthood on new union fertility of men and women in the UK. I focus on the childbearing process over multiple unions and try to clarify the relative importance of a first and a second shared child for couples having pre-union children as opposed to unions without pre-union children. I also intend to shed light on the fertility differential of men and women involved in intact families and step-families and provide new evidence on the influence of parentage and residential status of pre-union children on the risk of first and second birth of individuals in first or higher-order unions over the lifetime. Using Understanding Society, which provide full retrospective information on unions and births up to age 50, I run discrete-time event history models combined with a multilevel approach to estimate gender differences in fertility probability.