Cohort Increases in Childlessness in Italy are Largely Driven by Changes in Partnership Patterns

Angelo Lorenti , Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Letizia Mencarini, Bocconi University

This study examines and quantifies the contribution of socio-demographic characteristics to the increase in permanent childlessness across successive cohorts of Italian women. We reconstruct the life histories of 24,000 women born between 1950 and 1975, based on retrospective data from the 2016 ISTAT “Families, Social Subjects, and Life Cycle” survey. To analyze the interdependent roles of education, labor force participation, and union status in affecting trajectories of childlessness and their changing roles across cohorts, we use a dynamic counterfactual decomposition based on the longitudinal g-formula with Monte Carlo integration. This approach allows us to simulate counterfactual scenarios to understand how changes in education, labor force participation, and union formation and their timing have contributed to the increase in childlessness. Our results indicate that changing patterns in partnership formation—particularly declining fertility within marriage and increasing union instability—are the most important factors driving increases in childlessness across cohorts. Although higher education is often associated with delayed and forgone childbearing, our results suggest that its direct effect on permanent childlessness is mostly mediated by its influence on union formation. Besides, our findings highlight the complex interdependence across socio-demographic processes and the need to account for these interdependences in fertility research.

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 Presented in Session 107. Childlessness and Late Parenthood