Explaining Fertility Decision-Making in Romania

This paper estimates the parity-progression fertility intentions within the Romanian low-fertility context, using the Theory of Planned Behavior (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010). We analyse how attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control affect fertility intentions among childless and one-child parents. We use data from the 2005 wave of Generation and Gender Survey. We applied a Principal Axis Factor Analysis in order to build measures of the suggested theoretical socio-psychological factors. Three logistic regression models compare the determinants of childbearing intentions among the childless and parents. We observe that social pressure is the most influential predictor of parity-progression intentions, perceived in a higher degree by the childless. Positive attitudes play a higher role as a childbearing predictor for parents than for childless. The result underlines the positive experience as a parent which influences the transition to the second child. Fertility intentions also vary according to the regional area of residence, as proxy of different Romanian cultural contexts.