Childbearing across Partnership in the U.S., Australia, and Scandinavia

Elizabeth Thomson, Stockholm University and University of Wisconsin at Madison
Trude Lappegård, Statistics Norway
Marcia J. Carlson, University of Wisconsin at Madison
Edith E. Gray, Australian National University
Ann Evans, Australian National University

We take a lifecourse and demographic approach to the study of childbearing with more than one partner. We analyze the risk of two types of higher-order births – those with the parent of prior children and those with someone else. We can therefore produce estimates of the likelihood of experiencing such births even for those who have not (yet) had them and contribute to a better understanding of the life paths and timing of life events that lead to having children with more than one partner. We focus as well on the socioeconomic origins of such life paths, and compare socioeconomic differentials a cross two types of welfare regimes – social democratic and liberal. We compare two liberal welfare regimes (the U.S. and Australia) with two social democratic regimes (Sweden and Norway). We can therefore control to some extent for within-regime differentials in drawing inferences from between-regime differentials.