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Increasing shares of European women are making large investments in their human capital. Whether and to what extent these investments are in conflict with reproductive behaviour are issues that have repercussions for fertility levels. Using two Eurobarometer survey data (2006 and 2011) on individuals clustered in the 27 EU countries, I investigate the relationship between women's education and lifetime fertility intentions. Results suggest that a positive association between women's level of education and lifetime fertility intentions exists at both the individual and country levels, as well as in a micro-macro integrated framework. The main explanation for these findings - which remains to be proven by future research - is that, in institutional contexts allowing highly educated women to have large families, women of reproductive ages are more prone to make investments in both human capital and family size, because these choices are not seen as incompatible alternatives.

'The relatively low levels of ideal and ultimately intended family size manifested in some European countries (Goldstein et al. 2003; Testa, 2006) inspired a careful analysis of the childless preference in Europe based on the Eurobarometer surveys in 2001 and 2006. The aim of the current paper is to investigate the childlessness ideal, or the intention to stay without children, and their contribution to the current levels of ideal and intended fertility in Europe. The analysis is complemented by a comparison between childless women and women with children in respect to two relevant aspects related to childbearing and childrearing: the circumstances perceived as most important in the fertility decisions and the opinion on gender roles in family life. Findings show that young Austrian women hold the record for the lowest fertility ideals and intentions, which are on average definitely below replacement levels. Austria is also the country with the largest diffusion of the childless preference. However, the childless option only plays a secondary role in explaining the cross-national differences and childlessness - although quite high in some countries - is still very rare as an enduring or a lifetime choice. Interestingly, childless women are not significantly different from women with children in their opinion on the relevant childbearing decision- making factors and do not show different views on issues related to gender roles in family life.' (author's abstract)|

Background: Relatively little research has been conducted on how economic recessions impact fertility intentions. In particular, uncertainty in reproductive intentions has not been examined in relation to economic shocks. Objective: The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of individuals' perception of negative changes in both their own and their country's economic performance on reproductive intentions in Europe during the time of the 'Great Recession' (2006-2011). Crucially, we examine both intentions and stated certainty of meeting these intentions. Methods: Using the 2011 Eurobarometer survey for 27 European countries, fertility intentions and reproductive uncertainty are regressed on individuals' perceptions of past trends in country's economic situation, household's financial situation, and personal job situation. Multilevel ordinal regressions models are run separately for people at parities zero and one as well as controlling for a set of socio-demographic variables. Results: A worsening in the households' financial situation, as perceived in the years of the economic crisis, does not affect people's fertility intentions but rather the certainty of meeting these intentions. This relationship holds true at the individual-level for childless people. The more negative the individual's assessment of the household's financial situation, the higher the reproductive uncertainty. While this works exclusively at the country-level for people at parity one, the higher the share of people"s pessimism on households' financial situation in the country the more insecure individuals of such a country are about having additional children. Conclusions: The empirical evidence suggests that individuals' uncertainty about realising their fertility intentions has risen in Europe and is positively linked to people's perceived household financial difficulties. If European economies continue to fare poorly, fertility intentions could eventually start to decline in response to such difficulties.

The aim of this article is to examine the determinants of couples' childbearing intentions, by explicitly taking into account the agreement or disagreement of the two members of the couple. The relevance of the partner's reproductive intentions has been well recognised in the literature, but few studies have provided in-depth analyses of the fertility plans of both partners. In our study, we used the household-level data from a survey on "Family and Social Subjects", carried out by the Italian National Statistical Office in 2003, which provides characteristics on both partners. We adopted a couple's perspective which allows us to give a unitary picture of the concordant or discordant nature of partners' first child intentions. We found that a lack of agreement in the reproductive decision-making process is likely to occur in the Italian couples where the role of the woman is less traditional. In particular, cohabitant, highly educated and working women are more likely to be in disagreement with their partners in the decisions concerning having a first child. Being religious may be also a source of discordance in the couples' reproductive plans. Our findings support the utility of taking a couple-based approach in studies on fertility intentions.

The impacts of climate change and related hazards are increasingly being felt across the world. It is recognised that climate change is largely anthropogenic and caused by a continuous worsening of environmental conditions. Whether and to what extent these hazards will result in human fatalities depends on the vulnerability of the people affected, or positively put, on their robustness and resiliency. People can choose to respond to the prospect of climate change and decide what steps to take. At community level, they can develop new technologies that will allow economic development while reducing the anthropogenic contributions to climate change. At individual level, the most aware people react to climate change by adopting responsible behaviours. Thus, an important question is whether and how people are aware of the environmental worsening conditions. In this paper, we examine the spreading of the fear for climate change in the 27 countries of European Union. Using the Eurobarometer 2011 survey and multilevel logistic regression models with individuals nested in countries, we found a high level of heterogeneity in people's concerns about climate change across Europe and, within countries, across individuals with different sociodemographic characteristics. Highly educated people and those who have, or plan to have, children are the groups most concerned about the future challenge posed by climate change.

Aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of environmental conditions on human reproductive behavior in the highest industrialized countries. We discuss the hypothesis that individuals fearing for a foreseen unhealthy environment tend to delay or forgo childbearing, thus contributing to a reduced ecological footprint. The empirical analysis is based on the Eurobarometer survey carried out in the 27 EU countries in 2011. Multilevel ordinal regression models on additionally intended number of children are used. A random intercept is considered to take into account the clustering of individuals within countries. Results indicate that people's intended number of children is not very strongly correlated with people's concerns about climate change, but if a statistically significant relation is detected, this is positive: the stronger the concern, the higher the intended number of children. This result suggests that the desire to pass an enjoyable and healthy environment to the future generations does not refrain people to plan large families and that the parents' environmental concern can be instrumental in stimulating parents' responsible behaviours and proper policies at institutional level.