The Effect of Culture on the Age at First Birth

Sammanfattning: In this thesis, we investigate the potential effect of culture on the age at first birth. During the past decade, the age at first birth in Europe has steadily increased to an unprecedented level. Being one of the main factors behind decreasing fertility rates, this is of interest for the dangers following an aging population. With the aim to investigate if the cultural effect, previously found in the quantum of fertility, also exists in the timing-decision of first birth, we conduct an ordinary least square regression using a dataset measuring attitudes across Europe. To trace a cultural effect we use the epidemiological approach that focuses on the transmission of attitudes across generations. We find that culture has a positive effect on the age at first birth when controlling for age, education, partner's education, human capital, GDP per capita, and country- and survey round fixed effects. This result emphasizes the importance of taking culture into consideration when designing policies aimed at combating the aging population.