Rich societies have witnessed a postponement of parenthood over the past two decades, and young adults’ economic conditions are often invoked to explain this trend. However, macro-level trends in both “subjective” perceptions of economic uncertainty and “objective” measures of actual income provide no satisfactory explanation for the postponement of parenthood. We propose a potential solution to this puzzle by hypothesizing that the economic prerequisites of parenthood have increased over the past two decades. We expect that this has raised the degree of perceived economic certainty and the level of income that people wish to achieve before having a first child. To test this hypothesis, we draw on individual-level longitudinal data from seven countries from the Comparative Panel File. Our findings show that young adults’ perceived economic uncertainty is not consistently associated with the transition to parenthood. Moreover, the effects of perceived economic uncertainty did not change over time. In contrast, we find consistent evidence that the link between income and first birth has become more strongly positive over the past two decades. This is true mainly for women but also for men, and suggests that increasing income prerequisites are a key mechanism behind the postponement of parenthood.

中文翻译：

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生育推迟、经济不确定性以及生育收入增加的先决条件

在过去的二十年里，富裕社会见证了生育子女的推迟，年轻人的经济状况经常被用来解释这一趋势。然而，对经济不确定性的“主观”认知和对实际收入的“客观”衡量的宏观趋势并没有为推迟生育提供令人满意的解释。我们通过假设在过去二十年中为人父母的经济先决条件有所增加，提出了解决这个难题的潜在解决方案。我们预计这会提高人们在生第一个孩子之前所希望实现的经济确定性程度和收入水平。为了检验这一假设，我们利用比较面板文件中七个国家的个人纵向数据。我们的研究结果表明，年轻人感知到的经济不确定性与为人父母的过渡并不总是相关。此外，人们感知到的经济不确定性的影响并没有随着时间的推移而改变。相比之下，我们发现一致的证据表明，在过去二十年里，收入和第一胎之间的联系变得更加紧密。这主要适用于女性，也适用于男性，这表明增加收入先决条件是推迟生育的关键机制。