Who remains childless? :unrealised fertility plans in Hungary

Abstract

This article focuses on remaining childless as a result of certain choices and constraints (not on becoming childless as a result of outliving children). There are two main aims of this study. First it seeks to reveal whether any specifi c features appear when (temporarily) childless people are compared with those with children in the same cohorts. It also aims to explore what kinds of factors can lead to childlessness (or more precisely, the prolongation of a childless period in life) among those men and women who, according to their self-assessment, were not prevented from having children by their own or their partner’s health constraints. The analysis draws on GGS data from the fi rst three waves of the Hungarian panel survey ‘Turning Points of the Life Course’ conducted in 2001, 2004, and 2008. The focus is on men and women who were childless in 2001 and were still childless in 2008. According to the fi ndings, events directly connected to childbearing, such as having a stable partner or not having a partner, living in cohabitation or in marriage, have more infl uence on decisions about becoming parents than normative expectations, while economic factors (such as having a job) have some impact mainly on postponing childbearing, but do not seem to infl uence directly whether people will remain childless.