The Decision of Whether to Have a Child: Does Couple Disagreement Matter?

Most of the international studies on fertility are based on a female perspective. A majordifficulty in couple-level research is the need for high-quality data that includes informationon both partners. Using couple data from a longitudinal study conducted in Italy [2003-2007],a country with persistently low fertility levels, we examined the effect of disagreement withina couple about childbearing behaviour. The starting point was the hypothesis advanced in anearlier study that Italian women prevail in reproductive decision-making, because childbearinglies mainly in their sphere of influence. The data revealed that the decision rules are parityspecific.At parities zero and one, the disagreement produced an intermediate childbearingoutcome irrespective of which partner wanted a(nother) child; while at higher parities, anasymmetrical veto power model in which the female partner had greater influence wasobserved. The findings suggest that the predictive power of short-term fertility intentionsstrongly improves if both partners’ views are considered in fertility models, and thus supportthe adoption of couple analysis in fertility research