Affluent families in Europe more inclined to have babies: Study

They are also highly educated, in stable relationships and have support networks

- Arvind Jayaram

If you are affluent, educated and well connected socially, you are more likely to have children than someone who is not. That is the finding of research conducted by European sociologists amid sharp fall in fertility rates in the region and elsewhere.

Research professor Anna Rotkirch, director of the Population Research Institute at the Family Federation of Finland, told The Straits Times a reason for this could be that individuals may delay their decision to have a child till they are more sure about the future. "For many, having children is kind of the cherry on the cake. You don't have children to reduce uncertainty. On the contrary, you stay childless longer to reduce uncertainty and then, when you feel very certain, you have a child," she said.

This is the obverse of the theory of "uncertainty reduction", which suggested that people from poorer backgrounds historically had more children because of high child mortality, and to have someone take care of them in their old age.

"And this explanation, I mean, it's a hypothesis but it fits with the fact that those who actually become parents in the Nordic countries are those who are better off.

They're highly educated, but they are also those who have a stable partnership (and) good support networks." said Prof Rotkirch.

Stockholm University's associate professor of demography Livia Olah said that for the most disadvantaged people, there was also significant uncertainty over maintaining a partnership. "It seems that, for people who have a high career and relatively high income, it's much easier for them to both find a partner and to have a rewarding long-term relationship. But as for the least advantaged segment of the population, they also become disadvantaged demographically, both in terms of finding and maintaining a partner and of course having children," she said.