Does the probability of having a child depend on the level of wealth and its subjective perception in Russian households: in search of answers to eternal questions
Abstract
This paper uses microdata of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS-HSE) to examine the impact of economic factors such as household income, women's wages, factors of subjective well-being, life satisfaction and health status on the likelihood of having children in Russia, which, after a long decline throughout the 1990s, began to increase in the 2000s, thereafter rising almost continuously. The results were as follows: higher total household income serves to encourage childbirth, while higher wages of the woman curtail it, but when indicators such as life satisfaction and health condition are high, the likelihood of childbirth increases significantly. Most previous research concerning determinants of the birth rate in Russia has shown that household income has no effect at all, but the findings in this paper suggest that this may have been due to the special circumstances that existed at the beginning of the economic transformation in the 1990s.
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