Fatherhood in Russia - Evaluation of biological and fanthropological assumptions with demographic data

David Alich, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

The aim of this paper is to study the male aspect of fertility behavior. By applying event-history analysis to the data of the recently conducted Russian Generation and Gender Survey (GGS) from 2004, we investigate if common male-fertility approaches are applicable also to Russian men. We focus on the examination of the following hypotheses, which are rather biological and anthropological founded, then based on demographic studies: 1. Due to biological characteristics, men have a longer reproductive age span than women. 2. Men usually start their family building career 2 to 3 years later than females. 3. In terms of biological parenthood, men have a greater diversity concerning their number of children born. 4. Men more often stay childless. 5. In surveys, they tend to underreport their fertility. A further issue is to what extent the sex differences in fertility has been influenced by the political, social and economic changes in Russia in the 1990s? Our empirical findings suggest that only one of these hypotheses seems to be relevant in our dataset. Thus, we found no evidence that Russian men really use their comparatively longer reproductive life span, even if they have the physical capacity. Further, our results did not support that male Russians stay more often childless or having a small number of children in comparison to females, whereas other men having a larger progeny size. Neither, the examination shows a remarkable underreporting pattern of men, concerning their biological children. We would like to point out that these findings differ noteworthy from what is known so far about the very basics of male fertility.