Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/18254 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2002
Series/Report no.: 
DIW Discussion Papers No. 270
Publisher: 
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin
Abstract: 
This paper investigates whether and how regional social contexts influence fertility decisions of women living in western Germany during the 1980s and 1990s. It is argued that regional opportunity structures as well as local patterns of social interaction and culture may translate into parameters that directly affect individual behaviour. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) are linked with a set of regional indicators to estimate multilevel discrete-time logit models for the transition to the first and second child. The empirical analysis provides no evidence that fertility differentials observed at the regional level are due to autonomous contextual effects. It is rather suggested that most of the observed regional variation results from differences in the spatial distribution of individual characteristics.
Subjects: 
multilevel analysis
fertility
Germany
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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