While fertility is positively correlated across generations, the causal effect of children's experience with larger sibships on their own fertility in adulthood is poorly understood. Using the sex composition of the two first-born children as an instrumental variable, we estimate the effect of...

This study describes the association between having children and the risk of union disruption, and whether this association has changed over time. We expand upon previous research by including data on cohabiting as well as married couples, and by studying change over four decades. We use data...

This study investigates how the association between union dissolution and childlessness depends on life course context. Data on union histories and fertility are taken from the Norwegian GGS. To observe union histories up to age 45, I include men and women born 1927-1962, giving a study sample...

The relationship between income, cost of childrearing and fertility is of considerable political and theoretical interest. We utilize exogenous variation in family income and the direct cost of children to estimate causal effects on fertility. The variation comes from a regional child benefit...

Fertility contagion through social networks increasingly attracts the interest of demographers. While these theories propose a causal mechanism, they are rarely put to test in a plausibly causal statistical design. This study applies quasi-experimental techniques to distinguish network effects...