Uncertainty and Fertility Goals
Karen Benjamin Guzzo, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carolina Population Center
In the years since the Great Recession, considerable attention has been paid to declining fertility rates, with additional concern over the impact of the pandemic on childbearing behavior.
It remains unclear whether changes in fertility behavior reflect changes in fertility goals, rising inability to accomplish goals, or some combination. Drawing from multiple theories, I investigate how uncertainty and subjective indicators of well-being – concepts distinct from objective measures of social and economic status – factor into fertility goals (an umbrella term that includes, but is not limited to, childbearing desires and intentions). All other things equal, these theories would suggest that people who do not feel confident about their lives and futures, regardless of their objective statuses, will be unlikely to have strong and positive childbearing goals. I provide an overview of several in-progress projects using different datasets that test this basic assertion.
About the speaker:
Karen Benjamin Guzzo is Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and serves as Director of the Carolina Population Center. She received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and did postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a family sociologist and demographer whose work considers patterns and variation in family formation, primarily working with survey data. Dr. Guzzo is an expert on trends and differentials in U.S. fertility preferences and fertility behaviors, such as delayed childbearing and childlessness, fertility intentions, nonmarital fertility, and childbearing across partnerships. Dr. Guzzo’s research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (Department of Health and Human Services). Dr. Guzzo serves as a Deputy Editor for Demography and is on the Editorial board of Journal of Marriage and Family, Journal of Family Theory and Review, and Family Transitions. She currently serves as a Board Member for the Population Association of America and on the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Family Section Council.