Is Increasing Life-Course Complexity a Main Factor behind the Childless Boom? Evidence from the Trajectories of Italian Cohorts Born between 1916 and 1971

Maria Letizia Tanturri, University of Padova
Annalisa Donno, University of Padova
Chiara Baldan, RESEARCH FELLOW

A few studies (Jalovaara2017, Tocchioni 2018, Tocchioni et al. 2022) have clearly shown that childlessness needs to be studied in relation to individuals’ life trajectories and that there is an extreme heterogeneity in paths leading to childlessness on the whole. What it remains unclear however is whether the growing complexity in the individual life course, with particular regard to relationship and career instability, fuels the increase of childlessness prevalence among the younger cohorts. From the most recent Families, Social Subjects, and Life Cycle survey (2016), a sub-sample of 2,135 childless individuals born between 1916 and 1971 (women aged at least 45 and men at least 50 at the time of the interview) have been selected. Using sequence and cluster analysis on individual biographies, five clusters have been identified whose importance changes substantially across cohorts and by sociodemographic characteristics. Calculating the complexity index of each individual trajectory, this paper shows that the growing complexity of biographies and the increasing importance of turbulent sequence of events in the life-course are becoming more and more important among the cohorts born after 1945 and if they are not a major factor yet, they could become crucial for the generations born after 1971.

Keywords: Fertility, Longitudinal studies

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