Effects of education on second births before and after societal transition: Evidence from the Estonian GGS

This article examines the influence of educational attainment and enrolment on second births in Estonia, comparing the patterns before and after the onset of the societal transformation of the 1990s. While many Northern and Western European countries have shown a positive relationship between female education and second births, this pattern has not been found in Central and East European countries. Against that background, Estonia offers an interesting case with noticeably high second birth intensities for highly educated women. In the state socialist period, after controlling for the influence of other characteristics, including the partner's education, women with tertiary education were found to have higher second birth intensity than women from any lower educational strata. In the postsocialist period, the difference has grown smaller, but women with tertiary education still display a significantly higher transition rate to second birth than their counterparts with secondary education. Following the presentation of empirical findings, the article discusses the mechanisms that could underlie the observed relationship between education and fertility decisions in the changing societal context. The analysis employs microdata from the Estonian Generations and Gender Survey (GGS), conducted in 2004-05.economic transition, educational attainment, Estonia, Generations and Gender Survey (GGS), second births

Women's Relative Resources and Couples' Gender Balance in Financial Decision-Making

We investigate how the relative education and earnings of husbands and wives are associated with self-reported decision-making within the family. Using European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions 2010 data for 27 European countries (n = 72,638), we find that women who earn more than their partner are more likely to report that they alone make the major financial and other important decisions. Men are more likely than women to be reported as financial decision makers if women contribute less than a quarter to joint earnings. However, in line with predictions based on traditional gender display, the association with relative earnings is not linear: among couples in which wives earn almost all of the income, we find that husbands are reported to have more say in financial decision-making than among couples in which both contribute a substantial part of the joint income. This non-linear pattern does not hold similarly for general decision-making. The discrepancy suggests that major financial issues, which were traditionally within the male realm, may be more susceptible to gender display than other family decisions

The end of hypergamy : global trends and implications

The research conducted by Albert Esteve and Iñaki Permanyer leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC-2014-StG-637768 for the EQUALIZE project). The research conducted by Jan Van Bavel and Martin Klesment has received funding from the European Research Council as well (ERC-STG-312290 for the GENDERBALL project). The research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was carried out using the facilities of the Center for Demography and Ecology (R24 HD047873)In this work, we focus on the implications of the reversal for trends in assortative mating and, in particular, for educational hypergamy: the pattern in which husbands have more education than their wives. This represents a substantial update to previous studies (Esteve, Garcia-Román, and Permanyer 2012) in the number of countries and years included in the analysis. We present findings from an almost comprehensive world-level analysis using census and survey microdata from 420 samples and 120 countries for the period 1960-2011, which allow us to assert that the reversal of the gender gap in education is strongly associated with the end of hypergamy and increases in hypogamy (wives having more education that their husbands). We provide near universal evidence of this trend and extend our analysis to consider the implications of the end of hypergamy for family dynamics, outcomes, and gender equality. We draw on European microdata to examine whether women are more likely to be the primary breadwinners in the household when they marry men with lower education than themselves and discuss recent research regarding divorce risks among hypogamous couples. We close with an examination of attitudes about women earning more money than their husbands and about the implications for children when a woman works for pay

The Estonian Generations and Gender Survey 2020:

In Estonia, the Generations and Gender Survey 2020 (GGS-II) is the third large-scale demographic survey that collects data on family and fertility dynamics. As the country participates in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, the GGS-II opted for a shorter age range of the sample (18–59). The questionnaire in the GGS-II in Estonia follows the GGS-II wave 1 baseline questionnaire. The questionnaire also includes the Global Uncertainties’ module developed by the Nordic countries, a battery of questions on the perceived impact of COVID-19, and several country-specific items. The GGS-II in Estonia was implemented using only computer-assisted web interviewing (CAWI). In this article, we present a concise overview of the sampling and data collection process, analyse representativeness and response rates, and briefly assess the data quality. We conclude that despite low response rates, the GGS-II provides a good basis for the analysis of fertility and family dynamics

Infant mortality in the Lutheran population of Tartu at the end of the nineteenth century [Kokkuvõte: Imikusuremus Tartu luteriusulises rahvastikus 19. sajandi lõpul]

Using parish registers (1897–1900), linked to the first Russian Imperial census of 1897, this study investigates infant mortality among the Lutheran population in Tartu at the end of the nineteenth century. The results reveal considerable variation in infant mortality according to parents’ demographic, cultural and socio-economic characteristics, and sanitary conditions. Even after controlling for the influence of socio-economic status, infants born to Baltic-German families had higher survival rates than those born to Estonian families. This lends support to the view of the Baltic-Germans as the forerunners of demographic modernization in Estonia. Paternal socio-economic characteristics appeared stronger predictors of infant deaths than mother’s level of education and employment. Lower infant mortality was characteristic of infants whose fathers were employed in professional and sales occupations. Being born out-of-wedlock, into large families and belonging to households that acquired drinking water from the river exerted a strong negative effect on infant survival. KEYWORDS: infant mortality, Lutherans, parish registers, 1897 census, linked-record study, urban population, Estoni

The Reversal of the Gender Gap in Education and Female Breadwinners in Europe

While men have historically attained more education than women around the world, this gender imbalance in education has reversed in many countries. In these countries, the wife now typically has as much or more education as the husband, while it has always been the other way around in the past. Using the 2007 and 2011 rounds of the EU-SILC (N=95,498 for 27 countries), this paper investigates to what extent the newly emerging pattern of educational assortative mating is associated with a higher proportion of women who outearn their partners in Europe. We find that this proportion varies on the country level between 20% and almost 50% for childless women and between 3 and 25% for women with toddlers. If a woman has more education than her partner, this clearly increases the odds that she earns more than half of the couple income. This happens to such an extent that it may offset the motherhood penalty: college educated mothers of school age children with a less educated partner are as likely to be the main breadwinner as college educated women without children but with a college educated man. However, large country heterogeneity remains that cannot be explained by educational pairings.nrpages: 37status: publishe

Effects of education on second births before and after societal transition: Evidence from the Estonian GGS

This article examines the influence of educational attainment and enrolment on second births in Estonia, comparing the patterns before and after the onset of the societal transformation of the 1990s. While many Northern and Western European countries have shown a positive relationship between female education and second births, this pattern has not been found in Central and East European countries. Against that background, Estonia offers an interesting case with noticeably high second birth intensities for highly educated women. In the state socialist period, after controlling for the influence of other characteristics, including the partner's education, women with tertiary education were found to have higher second birth intensity than women from any lower educational strata. In the postsocialist period, the difference has grown smaller, but women with tertiary education still display a significantly higher transition rate to second birth than their counterparts with secondary education. Following the presentation of empirical findings, the article discusses the mechanisms that could underlie the observed relationship between education and fertility decisions in the changing societal context. The analysis employs microdata from the Estonian Generations and Gender Survey (GGS), conducted in 2004-05

Educational Pairings, Motherhood, and Women's Relative Earnings in Europe

As a consequence of the reversal of the gender gap in education, the female partner in a couple now typically has as much as or more education than the male partner in most Western countries. This paper addresses the implications for the earnings of women relative to their male partners in 16 European countries. Using the 2007 and 2011 rounds of the EU-SILC (N=58,292), we investigate to what extent international differences in womenâ s relative earnings can be explained by educational pairings and their interaction with the motherhood penalty on womenâ s earnings, by international differences in male unemployment, or by cultural gender norms. While we find that the newly emerged pattern of hypogamy is associated with higher relative earnings for women in all countries and that the motherhood penalty on relative earnings is considerably lower in hypogamous couples, it cannot explain away international country differences. Similarly, male unemployment is associated with higher relative earnings for women, but cannot explain away the country differences. Against expectations, we find that the hypogamy bonus on womenâ s relative earnings, if anything, tends to be stronger rather than weaker in countries that exhibit more conservative gender norms.status: publishe