Causal Factors of Childlessness in Spain

Alberto Del Rey Poveda , University of Salamanca
Mikolaj Stanek Baranowski, University of Salamanca
Rafael Grande, Universidad de Málaga
Jesús García Gómez, Universidad de Salamanca

The objective of this work is to study the evolution of childlessness among the female population in Spain, that is, the different situations and conditions that cause some women to not have children by the end of their reproductive life, which is around 20% of women who are 40 years old or older. The study focuses on analysing how academic and career trajectories, marital status and the formation of new households affect the decision to remain childless. The study adopts a dual comparative perspective: first, by comparing the paths of couples who do not have children with those who have them (control group); second, by differentiating between couples who remain voluntarily childless and those who would have liked to have them, but for various reasons never did. The data used for the analysis was taken from the 2018 Fertility Survey carried out by the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE). This survey provides a complete history of births, marriages, creation of new households and the majority of the career paths, which allows the sequence of events to be ordered and for longitudinal-survival models to be applied in the analysis of those paths and how they impact reproduction. The preliminary results show us very different trajectories between women with and those without children in terms of marital status, leaving the paternal home and career paths, transitions that directly affect reproduction choices.

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 Presented in Session P1. Poster Session Fertility, Family and the Life Course