This edited volume offers state-of-the-art research on the dynamics of contemporary fertility by examining the implications of the economic and social forces that are driving the rapid change in fertility behavior, and the changing context, determinants, and measurement of contemporary human reproduction. The volume explores new theoretical avenues that seek to incorporate uncertainty, examine social contagion effects, and explain the rise in childlessness. Reproductive attitudes are re-examined in chapters that deal with models of parenthood and with the persistence of race-ethnic-nativity differences. A new and important subject of multi-partner fertility is also described by examining it in the context of total fertility and from the usually neglected perspective of men. The impact of divorce on fertility, the measurement of childlessness and the postponement of first births, developments in assortative mating and fertility, and current patterns of interracial fertility are also addressed in this volume. By combining up-to-date research spanning the entire field to illuminate contemporary developments, the book is a valuable source for demographers, sociologists, economists, and all those interested in understanding fertility in today's world.
Chapter
1. Introduction.- Part I: Contemporary Perspectives on
Fertility.
Chapter
2. Social capital, gender competition, and the resurgence
of childlessness.
Chapter
3. Uncertainty and narratives of the future: A
theoretical framework for contemporary fertility.- Chapter
4. Social
contagion effects in fertility: Theory and analytical strategy.
Chapter
5.
The context of interracial childbearing in the United States.- Part II:
Fertility Intentions.
Chapter
6. Do reproductive attitudes and knowledge
explain race-ethnic-nativity differences in unintended fertility?.
Chapter
7. Regional fertility differences in India.- Part III: The Demography of
Multipartner Fertility.
Chapter
8. Multi-partner fertility in Europe and the
United States.
Chapter
9. Welfare regimes and fertility in second unions.-
Chapter 10.- Years spent as mothers of young children: The role of completed
fertility, birth spacing, and multiple partner fertility.
Chapter 11.-
Wheres daddy? Challenges inthe measurement of mens fertility.- Part IV:
Issues of Measurement.
Chapter
12. Measuring the prevalence of multipartner
fertility independent of fertility level.
Chapter
13. Cross-sectional average
length of life by parity: Illustration of U.S. cohorts of reproductive age in
2015.
Robert Schoen received a Ph.D. degree in Demography from the University of California Berkeley in 1972. He has been a Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Johns Hopkins University, and Penn State University, where he was the Hoffman Professor of Family Sociology and Demography. In 2004, he received the Mindel Sheps Award in Mathematical Demography / Demographic Methods from the Population Association of America.