The Relation between Mother’s Socio-Economic Status and Daughter’s Fertility Intentions in Austria, Italy, Bulgaria, and Norway

Unlike actual fertility, fertility intentions are often found to be positively correlated witheducation. The literature explaining this paradox is scarce. We aim to fill the gap bysearching for the main factors that compel highly educated women to still plan large familysize. We hypothesize that this could result from the socioeconomic context surrounding theupbringing of those educated women. Using the first wave of the Generations and GenderSurveys for four countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, and Norway), we analyse therelationship between mother’s socio-economic status and daughter’s fertility intentions,controlling for daughter’s socio-economic status and sib-ship size. We found that theeffect of family of origin is exerted mainly through the sib-ship size among childlessdaughters: Daughters with more siblings intend to have more children. After the transitionto parenthood, the effect of family of origin is exerted mainly through the mother’s level ofeducation: Daughters with high-educated mothers intend to have more children. This resultsuggests that the positive link between reproductive intentions and level of educationmight not merely be an artefact generated by the design of cross-sectional surveys butthe outcome of a better socio-economic status that allows forming more positivereproductive plans