Trimarchi Alessandra, Van Bavel Jan
Centre for Sociological Research, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Leuven, Parkstraat 45, Box 3601, 3000, Leuven, Belgium.
Demography. 2017 Feb;54(1):119-144. doi: 10.1007/s13524-016-0533-3.
Although advanced education has been found to be consistently associated with a later transition to parenthood for women, findings about education and the transition to parenthood have been much less consistent for men, and no stylized fact has emerged from the literature. We argue that the inconsistency of findings for men is due to the fact that the selection process involved in union formation has been disregarded in earlier studies. We hypothesize that men's educational attainment consistently and positively affects the transition to fatherhood via higher rates of union formation. We apply multiprocess event-history analysis to data from the Generations and Gender Surveys for 10 European countries. Our results show indeed a consistent positive effect of education on the transition to fatherhood, but it operates chiefly through selection into union. Failing to account for this selection process leads to a major underestimation of the salience of education for the transition to fatherhood.
尽管研究发现，高等教育一直与女性较晚进入为人父母阶段相关，但关于教育与男性进入为人父母阶段的研究结果却远没有那么一致，而且文献中也没有出现典型的事实。我们认为，男性研究结果不一致的原因在于，早期研究忽略了伴侣关系形成过程中的选择过程。我们假设，男性的教育程度通过更高的伴侣关系形成率，持续且积极地影响着成为父亲的转变。我们将多过程事件史分析应用于10个欧洲国家的代际和性别调查数据。我们的结果确实表明，教育对成为父亲的转变有持续的积极影响，但这种影响主要是通过进入伴侣关系来实现的。如果不考虑这一选择过程，就会严重低估教育对成为父亲转变的重要性。
