Fertility Intentions in Lowest-Low Fertility Countries: The Case of Italy and Bulgaria

Christoph Buehler, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Paola Di Giulio, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Romina Fraboni, Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)

Despite the many differences that exist between Italy and Bulgaria, the two countries share with each other both one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe and very low levels of public support of the family. Consequently, in both countries informal supportive networks on the basis of family relationships and kinship have a strong tradition and a high relevance for getting things done. Our purpose is to understand how fertility intentions are formed in these two countries under the consideration that social support seems to be crucial for individuals to reach their fertility goals. Moreover, we aim at evaluating whether the embeddedness in supportive networks exert gender as well as parity-specific influences on fertility intentions. The paper focuses on comparisons of the characteristics of supportive networks in Italy and Bulgaria and their implications on fertility intentions. We use data from the “Gender and Generation Project”, a new comparative survey that was conducted recently in both coun-tries.