Subjective Well-Being and Fertility Uncertainty During the Pandemic

As fertility rates in the U.S. and elsewhere continue to fall, standard demographic theories that focus on objective micro- and macroeconomic conditions seem unable to explain these trends. New approaches, such as the Narrative of the Future framework and the “uncertainty” paradigm, have emphasized the potential for subjective perceptions to be important for fertility decision-making, net of objective characteristics. We use a unique new source of data—the National Couples’ Health and Time Study, a nationally representative sample of cohabiting and married adults interviewed between September 2020 and April 2021—to examine short-term fertility intentions and better understand if and how including a general subjective evaluation (overall life satisfaction) and domain-specific subjective evaluations (economic stress and relationship satisfaction) are related to fertility intentions. We find that most respondents did not intend to have a child in the next year, though about one in seven respondents were unsure about if/when to have a(nother) child. Net of objective characteristics, overall life satisfaction was positively associated with short-term intentions to have a child, and greater economic stress was linked to uncertainty about short-term intentions. We did not observe a link in multivariable models between relationship satisfaction and intentions. Further, models stratified by parenthood indicated that both objective characteristics and subjective perceptions were more strongly linked to first-birth intentions than higher-parity intentions. Our results add to the growing body of work suggesting that (a) subjective perceptions have modest but significant links to fertility decision-making and (b) uncertainty in decision-making is important to consider.