Intergenerational transmission of young motherhood. Evidence from Sweden, 1986–2009

Abstract

This study examines the intergenerational transmission of fertility patterns from mothers who had their first birth at young ages to their daughters using nationally representative longitudinal data from from population registers in Sweden, 1986–2009. It tests several mechanisms, including education, labor market attachment, socio-economic background, and family characteristics, that may intervene with the intergenerational transmission of reproductive behavior, to help explain to what extent and how early motherhood is reproduced across generations. We find that maternal age at first birth is a very strong determinant of daughters' entry into motherhood. Even after controlling for individual, background, and family factors, daughters of mothers who were relatively young when they started childbearing, are significantly more likely to have their first birth at young ages.

Keywords:

• intergenerational transmission
• young motherhood
• longitudinal
• duration models
• Sweden

Acknowledgements

This is a much revised version of a paper that was presented at the seminar on Intergenerational transmission of reproductive behavior in Leuven 2011. We are grateful to participants at this occasion and two anonymous referees for valuable comments. The authors acknowledge financial support from the Centre for Economic Demography at Lund University, and the Swedish Research Council.

Notes

1. One interesting exception, relevant to the present study, is Steenhof and Liefbroer (2008). This study explores the intergenerational transmission of age at first birth in the Netherlands among cohorts born between 1935 and 1984. The institutional context of the Netherlands is, however, different from that of the Nordic countries. Differences are particularly pronounced when it comes to gender norms, and how the welfare state is designed to support groups in need, resting more on the relationships between individual, employer and the church than on the relationship between the state and the individual as is the case in Sweden. Socio-economic inequality is, however, less pronounced in the Netherlands than in the Anglo-Saxon context, but stronger than in Sweden and the other Nordic countries (cf. Esping-Andersen, 1990, 1999).

2. In 2010, teenage fertility in the United States was 34.2, which is a decrease by 50% compared to 1995 (Ventura & Hamilton, 2011).

3. Our sample thus includes only Swedish-born individuals with two Swedish-born parents.

4. The first child does not necessarily have to be in the union which produced the observed sibships.

5. Not only age at first birth has been rising monotonically over recent decades, but so have years of education and the mean age for other important life course transitions (see Stanfors, 2003, chapters 6 and 7).

6. For these groups, 50% have become first-time mothers by age 27.5, and 28.5, respectively.

7. It should be kept in mind that young fathers are often correlated with young mothers, and thus individual effects should not be over-interpreted.

8. Being unemployed, however, is positively associated with age at first birth, which may seem counterintuitive, but replicates findings from earlier studies showing the unemployed to display similar demographic behavior as those established in the labor market (Hoem, 2000).

9. We know from past research that the pathways to family formation vary substantially by education, income, and civil status. If these factors represent underlying family-building preferences, we would expect that they would matter more for the intergenerational patterns of young motherhood.