Explaining voluntary low fertility in Europe : a multilevel approach

Issues of comparability among a few european countries are addressed, as far as female reproductive behavior and projects are concerned. The data are from the FFSs (Family and Fertility Survey) international research programme by UNECE-PAU. Voluntary childless and lone-child women versus those with total expected fertility of two or more children constitute the categories for our interest variable. The effects of individual covariates are investigated as well as those of two contextual dimensions. First, logit individual models were used within each of the involved countries to detect the relationship between the response variable and women's characteristics; then, a multilevel logit model was applied to detect how much of the total variation is due to the contextual conditions and what is their role.