![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
Abstract
Postponement of first birth has implications for the health and well-being of women and is often associated with lower fertility levels, a demographic reality affecting most high-income countries. Country-level institutional differences are one factor behind the variation in fertility in these countries. This paper examines the relationship between housing and mean age at first birth across 39 low-fertility countries. Using newly compiled indicators of multiple dimensions of the housing context we explore housing from the perspective of renters and homebuyers and examine differences for former-communist and non-former-communist countries. We use six indicators of the housing context and combine them into three different indexes: renter support index, homebuyer support index, and a combined index of both dimensions. Analyses show that access to housing is associated with age at first birth, but that this relationship has changed over time and is different for former-communist and non-former-communist countries. Findings support theories that expectations regarding the importance of homeownership for family formation are changing.
Acknowledgement
This study is grounded in work conducted with Ronald Rindfuss.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability
The data on housing indicators are available at HoMed: http://housingmetricsdatabase.com/.
Notes
1 UN data on household structure for selected countries reveals that the percent of multigenerational or complex households (defined as a single family nucleus and other persons) ranged from less than 2% in Norway to over 10% in Romania in 2011 (UN Data 2018). Furthermore, this has been decreasing in many countries, although to varying degrees. For example, in Russia and Ireland this rate decreased by over 25% from 2002 to 2010 (from 13.99% to 10.31% and 6.28% to 4.25%, respectively), whereas it only decreased by 5% in Hungary over a similar period (6.34% to 6% from 2001 to 2011) (UN Data 2018). Some countries have experienced increases in this type of household structure, but generally, the prevalence is still low. For example, in Norway the percent of complex households increased by 19% from 2001 to 2011 but was still less than 2% of the total households (UN Data 2018). Childbearing in complex households is more common in Asia, Eastern and Southern European countries than Western European, Nordic, or English speaking countries.
2 The “Difficult” regime (Italy, Spain, Greece) is where owner occupancy is high so there is a small rental market and homeownership is the norm, but mortgage debt is not widespread, meaning buyers must provide the bulk of the housing purchases price themselves or with the help of family networks. The “Easy” regime (Ireland, Iceland, Norway) is where owner occupancy is high and mortgages are widespread so that it is relatively easy for young people to receive formal financial support from the banking sector to help them buy their own homes. The “Career” regime (Denmark, Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, the US) is where owner occupancy is low but mortgages are high implying that homeownership is not universal but it is formally supported when people do want to buy. The “Elite” regime (Austria, Belgium, France, Portugal) is where owner occupancy is low and the mortgage debt ratio is low implying that homeownership is rare and typically only accessible to the wealthiest individuals.
In other analyses we estimated the relationship between these regimes and mean age at first birth over time. Our results do not support the cross-sectional findings reported in Mulder and Billari (Citation2010). Furthermore, no former-communist countries had high mortgage debt per capita as defined here. Results available upon request.
3 Asian countries have also typically been excluded in the housing-fertility literature. In their study of Taiwan, Lin et al. (Citation2016) propose that, given the consistently high female labor force participation rates in Asia, housing may be more important in Asian settings than in Western European ones. There are some key differences in the housing context (e.g., the nature of renting as in the jeonse system in South Korea (Lee and Choi Citation2015)) that likely require carefully incorporation into this existing framework. Unfortunately, we are not able to analyze Asian settings separately in our analysis so do not explore these differences here. When we exclude Japan and Korea, the only two Asian countries in our data, from the sample the results are substantively identical to those shown here.
4 A measure of government subsidizes on housing for young adults specifically was not available.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Sarah R. Brauner-Otto
Dr. Brauner-Otto is a social demographer studying global family change with a focus on the relationship between social context (e.g. schools, community organizations) and demographic behaviors over the life course. She is particularly interested in which dimensions of social context (e.g. characteristics of schools or health services) matter the most and how context influences the individual. Her research program has three axes: social influences on global family change, macro-level perspectives on social organizations and fertility, and methodological tools for studying global family change. Previously published papers examine the relationship between specific services offered by a community organization, type of religious practices, and the specific kinds of natural resources available and fertility and marriage behavior in Nepal and institutional influences on fertility in low fertility settings.