Alícia Adserà

Artificial intelligence (AI) is propelling a new phase of technological change beyond routine automation, and impacts directly the domains where individuals decide if, when and with whom to have children. This debate essay outlines four interlocking chan-nels through which AI is likely to reshape – and often widen – fertility inequalities over the next two decades. (1) Labour market polarisation: AI fosters labour augmentation, capital labour substitution and the emergence of new tasks. Those impacts may in turn affect income levels as well as gender pay differentials across educational groups, and alter the economic preconditions for partnership and childbearing. (2) AI-enabled reproductive med-icine and fertility apps: machine-learning tools promise higher success rates and finer cycle tracking, yet their benefits could concentrate among affluent, digitally literate couples depending on the policy environment. (3) Algorithmic partner matching: recommender systems in dating platforms intensify educational homogamy and may entrench socio-economic assortative mating, with downstream effects on union formation and completed fertility. (4) Algorithmic influence on ideals and information: personalised social media feeds and workplace monitoring shape perceptions of the “right” timing, costs and effort of parenthood, potentially reinforcing existing divides. Whether these mechanisms merely replace earlier drivers of fertility inequality or accumulate atop them remains an open ques-tion for demographic research and policy.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is propelling a new phase of technological change beyond routine automation, and impacts directly the domains where individuals decide if, when and with whom to have children. This debate essay outlines four interlocking chan-nels through which AI is likely to reshape – and often widen – fertility inequalities over the next two decades. (1) Labour market polarisation: AI fosters labour augmentation, capital labour substitution and the emergence of new tasks. Those impacts may in turn affect income levels as well as gender pay differentials across educational groups, and alter the economic preconditions for partnership and childbearing. (2) AI-enabled reproductive med-icine and fertility apps: machine-learning tools promise higher success rates and finer cycle tracking, yet their benefits could concentrate among affluent, digitally literate couples depending on the policy environment. (3) Algorithmic partner matching: recommender systems in dating platforms intensify educational homogamy and may entrench socio-economic assortative mating, with downstream effects on union formation and completed fertility. (4) Algorithmic influence on ideals and information: personalised social media feeds and workplace monitoring shape perceptions of the “right” timing, costs and effort of parenthood, potentially reinforcing existing divides. Whether these mechanisms merely replace earlier drivers of fertility inequality or accumulate atop them remains an open ques-tion for demographic research and policy.

This study explores what constitutes an ideal family in Italy and Spain, questioning the prevailing view that they are homogenous and traditional family-oriented countries. Specifically, it investigates whether family ideals in Italy and Spain can be characterized as ‘traditional’ (i); whether family ideals are similar in the two counties (ii); and whether these ideals vary across gender and educational backgrounds (iii). To capture the multidimensional nature of family ideals, we employed a factorial survey experiment in which respondents evaluated a set of family scenarios. This approach enables an assessment of the relative importance of the factors shaping individuals’ perceptions of the ideal family. The findings unveil a significantly modern picture of family ideals, where good communication and gender equality play a key role in positive family evaluations. However, cross-country comparisons reveal a greater prevalence of postmodern family ideals in Spain than in Italy, with a few, but notable differences across gender and education.

Volume 53 - Article 15 | Pages 419–464

Taking stock of individuals’ perceived family ideals is particularly important in the current moment given unprecedented fertility declines and the diversification of households in advanced industrial societies. Study participants in urban China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Italy, Spain, and Norway were asked to evaluate vignettes describing families whose characteristics vary on ten dimensions. In contrast to previous studies that focused on a single dimension, such as fertility ideals or gender roles, this holistic vignette approach identifies the relative importance of each dimension. Multilevel regression analysis reveals both expected and unexpected findings. Parenthood remains a positive ideal, but the number of children does not matter once other family dimensions are considered, a potentially important finding in light of conventional wisdom regarding the two-children ideal. When evaluating families with at least one child, respondents tend to positively evaluate more traditional arrangements, including valuing marriage relative to cohabitation and, particularly, divorce. Also, in addition to financial resources, good communication between immediate and extended family members, as well as maintaining respect in the larger community, are highly salient attributes of an ideal family. Notwithstanding some important cross-national differences, egalitarian gender roles and avoiding work–family conflict are also valued positively. Overall, even as the study reveals some notable variations between societies, respondents across countries identify similar components of an ideal family.

Different strands of research analyse gender occupational differences and how they relate to differential earnings, especially among parents juggling family demands. We use rich data from PIAAC across a subset of European countries and match occupational characteristics to individuals’ jobs using the O*NET database to analyse, first, whether there are gender differences in the occupational characteristics of jobs, particularly among parents, and second, whether the return to key occupational characteristics varies by gender. Compared to men, women’s jobs generally require more contact with others, less autonomy in decision-making, and less time pressure. In addition, positions held by mothers involve both less leadership expectations and less intensive use of machines than those held by fathers. Further, mothers receive a lower return to both of these occupational characteristics than fathers do. Finally, even though gaps in occupational characteristics such as leadership jointly with the differential sorting of mothers and fathers across sectors explain part of the gender wage gap in Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition models, especially in Continental Europe, a large share remains unexplained particularly in Eastern and Southern European countries.

How much do citizens value democracy? How willing are they to sacrifice their liberties and voting rights for growth, equality, or other social outcomes? We design a conjoint experiment in nationally representative surveys in Brazil, France, and the United States in which respondents choose between different societies that randomly vary in their economic outcomes (country income, income inequality, social mobility), political outcomes (democracy, public health insurance), and the level of personal income for each respondent. Our research allows us to estimate the respondents’ willingness to trade off democracy for individual income (as well as other societal attributes). We find that, on average, individuals are strongly attached to democracy and a robust welfare state. They prefer to live in a country without free democratic elections only if their individual income multiplies by at least three times and in a country without public health insurance only if their individual income more than doubles. After estimating these preferences at the individual level for all respondents, we show that, although there is an authoritarian minority in all three countries, forming a nondemocratic majority (by offering more income and/or other goods to respondents) is very unlikely. Our findings imply that, contrary to a growing discussion about the crisis of democracy, liberal democratic values remain substantially robust in high and middle income democracies.

Volume 49 - Article 22 | Pages 565–600

We examine whether the requirements of analytical skills and physical strength in jobs held by immigrant women in five major European destinations (France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the UK) converge to those of jobs of native-born women in their first ten years in the destination country. To this aim, we combine data from the European Labour Force Survey (2005–2015) of immigrant women arriving in these five countries and information about skill requirements from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET). At arrival, migrants in Spain and France use much less analytical skills, but for the period before the Great Recession, that gap closes relatively fast over time compared to other destinations, particularly in the low end of the skill distribution. Physical strength requirements of immigrant’s jobs increase over time and the gaps open in countries where immigrants depart from relatively more strength-intense jobs, while they close in Spain where immigrants use less strength than natives at arrival. Our estimates are also robust to selection into employment both at the average and across the skill distribution using recent techniques. Since the Labour Force Survey does not have information on wages, we use wage information from the European Union Structure of Earnings Survey to proxy average immigrant-native wage gaps implied by our estimated skill gaps by country.

This paper is the introduction to the Special Issue on “Fertility and social inequalities in migrant populations.” The Special Issue contains twelve empirical papers that deal with both international migrants and internal migrants, both women and men, both older migrant populations spanning several generations as well as recent immigrant groups, such as refugees, and include analyses of both behavior and intentions. The data used comprise macro indicators and individual-level data as well as qualitative material. Regional contexts include classical immigration countries in Europe and Oceania as well as relatively recent destinations. The papers draw on several comparative perspectives—migrants at destination, emigrants and stayers at origin, migrants with different numbers of children upon migration, and different migrant generations—to address three large questions. Six papers explore the role of time and sequencing in migrant fertility, in relation to both period effects and sequencing of births in the life course, as well as the role selection into migration plays in female and male migrants’ fertility behavior. Four papers focus into how regional variation in the receiving contexts shapes fertility behavior, highlighting the role of migrant type, human capital, and social capital. Two papers look at how childbearing is associated with different degrees of economic assimilation, i.e., maternal employment. Overall, this Special Issue demonstrates the large heterogeneity in fertility among migrant and ethnic minority groups. Social inequalities shape fertility differentials, which in turn influence subsequent life courses of migrants and ethnic minority group members. Future research on migrant assimilation should pay more attention to variation in demographic behavior.