Der Einfluss gesellschaftlicher und ökonomischer Rahmenbedingungen auf den Kinderwunsch russischer Männer

Since the beginning of the political and economic transition of the late 1980s and early 1990s, significant changes in the demographic behavior have been observed in Central and Eastern Europe. In addition to a dramatic decline of the Total Fertility Rate, the decrease in the numbers of marriages and the increase of cohabitations and extra marital births are the main aspects of the change in family formation behavior in Russia. Before the political and economic transition, individual's life-courses were structured by social and economic policies that guaranteed a modest level of living to everybody. After 1991, under the conditions of an emerging market economy, many Russian households experienced substantial economic hardships and uncertainties. The economic downturn had become one of the major factors responsible for the significant and rapid decline of Russian Total Fertility Rate. While the Total Fertility Rate decreased rapidly after the end of the 1990s, the Completed Fertility Rate has remained nearly constant. A reason for this development could be the postponement of births. The main research question in this context is to find out which factors influence the intentions to have a or a subsequent child in the next three years. The special focus of our study is to analyze the fertility intentions of Russian men. In the past, fertility behavior of men was rarely studied. But the intentions of men to have children differ from those of women in many ways. Men mostly bear the major burden of the financial security of the family and have a different perspective of the economic situation. Referring to the theories of family formation, mainly to the economic theories, we analyze, how the economic situation influences the intentions concerning family formation. We use the Russian Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) which was conducted in 2004. It contains information about demographic indicators, the economic situation and also information about family planning intentions. To analyze the data we applied a logistical regression. One of the main results is an enormous difference between the influences on the intentions to have a first or a subsequent child. Whereas the desire to have a first child is far less influenced by economic factors, these are the decisive factors for the decision to have a second, third or subsequent child. We assume that in the case of childless men emotional, mental and normative factors influence the intentions to have a child much more than economic circumstances. For men with at least one child we show that the objective economic situation as well as its subjective perception have a strong influence on the intention to have another child in the next three years. Both, the household net income and the subjective appraisal of the economic circumstances have a strong positive influence on the intention to have another child. For respondents who have no children we did not find such an effect