Horizontal vs. vertical transmission of fertility preferences

• Published in: Journal of Comparative Economics Vol. 47; no. 3; pp. 562 - 578
• Main Author: Di Miceli, Andrea
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01.09.2019
• Subjects: Channels of cultural transmission; Cultural transmission; Fertility preferences; Second-generation immigrants; U.S. fertility; Second-generation immigrants; U.S. fertility; Fertility preferences; Z10; J12; N32; Cultural transmission; Channels of cultural transmission; J13
• ISSN: 0147-5967; 1095-7227
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2019.06.001

•The transmission of immigrant fertility preferences can be “vertical” (from the parents) or “horizontal” (from foreign-born peers).•For second-generation immigrants, the horizontal fertility transmission channel prevails where there exist many foreign-born peers of the same ancestry (i.e. from the parents country of origin).•For second-generation immigrants, the vertical fertility transmission channel dominates where few foreignborn peers live. I study the cultural transmission of fertility preferences among second-generation immigrant women observed in U.S. Censuses from 1910 to 1970. As hypothesized by Bisin and Verdier (2001), the transmission of preferences can be “vertical” or “horizontal”. Using a unique source documenting the variation in fertility behavior in Europe before and after the first demographic transition (1830–1970), I unpack the influence of parents (measured by source-country fertility at the time of departure from Europe) versus the influence of peers from the same source-country (measured by fertility of the same-age cohorts living in the source-country and transmitted by same-age recent immigrants). I find that the transmission mechanism is crucially affected by the number of foreign-born immigrant peers living in the same MSA. On one hand, the “vertical” channel of transmission is stronger in places where there are few newly arrived foreign-born immigrant couples from the same source-countries. On the other hand, the “horizontal” channel prevails in MSA’s densely populated by recently arrived immigrants from the same source-countries of second-generation ones.