The work has dealt with various issues concerning fertility both in historical and current times, such as: male fertility, the differential fertility between migrating and settling in historical times, but also the role of the job insecurity on the current dynamics of low fertility. The three topics are briefly summarized below:
1) In the process of fertility decline, the role and participation of men have hardly been considered in the demographic literature. It has grown only as fertility was dropping dramatically in most Western countries, but very little has been done to analyze such an issue in historical populations. Based on individual-level data, the present paper aims at investigating, by means of hazard models, the role of males in the reproductive pattern of the pre-transitional population of Alghero, Sardinia (1866–1935). The results show a slower decrease of male fertility (-23% at 40–49 years; around -50% at 50+) compared to female fertility (about -40% already at 35–49 years), with significant differentials by socioeconomic status (SES). Wealthier men present, in fact, lower fertility than poorest ones, with a gap that, however, reduces with age and even reverses at 50+ years. The reason for such a change is likely to be partly associated with the better health conditions of the wealthy group, developed especially in adulthood, given the absence of a significant relationship between height and fertility SES differentials.
2) Historical studies of fertility based on micro-data focused first on small villages, then on urban and industrial populations. However, little is still known about fertility in the capital cities that were the vanguards of modernization. This study investigates differential legitimate fertility by origin in the city of Madrid in 1905. We aim to test the hypotheses of adaptation, socialization, selection, and disruption, while searching signs of birth control. In addition to descriptive statistics, logistic models on the likelihood of a legitimate birth are proposed. We find a general adaptation of migrants to the fertility levels of the city, even if isolated indication of socialization and disruption can also be recognized. Selection remains unclear. Our findings highlight how the dominant pattern in Madrid 1905 was a homogeneous marital fertility for natives and for migrants from diverse origins, a scenario mainly due to the adverse conditions encountered by the lower classes in the city. Despite some limitations, this article extends the knowledge on fertility differentials by origin in the urban environment in historical time. This paper also contributes to explain the relatively low legitimate fertility, frequent in capital cities just before the decisive decline.
3) The association between women’s participation in labour market and fertility has been studied in the last years in Southern Europe. In Spain, for example, women who worked in public sector jobs, became mothers earlier than self- employed and private sector employees . The role of men in these dynamics, in contrast, has received less attention from demographers and social science scholars. We use data from the 2018 Spanish National Fertility Survey recently provided by INE (Spanish National Institute of Statistics), focusing our attention on the relationship between men’s participation in labour market and transition to first birth. We create an episode-structured data-set in order to estimate event-history models. Our outcomes highlight how labour uncertainty delayed the men’ s transition to first birth in Spain in the last recent years.
The results were disseminated through scientific papers, conferences and events such as Researchers' Night and Science week.
