文章基本信息

标题：Narratives of the future and fertility decision-making in uncertain times. An application to the COVID-19 pandemic
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作者：RAFFAELE GUETTO ; GIACOMO BAZZANI ; DANIELE VIGNOLI 等
期刊名称：Vienna Yearbook of Population Research
印刷版ISSN：1728-4414
电子版ISSN：1728-5305
出版年度：2022
卷号：20
DOI：10.1553/populationyearbook2022.res1.6
语种：English
出版社：Austrian Academy of Sciences Press
摘要：The sociological and demographic literatures have widely demonstrated that fertility decisions are shaped by individuals’ previous life experiences and socioeconomic status – i.e., the “shadow of the past.” However, rising uncertainty in contemporary societies necessitates an analytical framework that acknowledges the influence of the future in the fertility decision-making process. Based on the Narrative Framework, we argue that personal narratives of the future, and their constitutive elements of expectations and imaginaries – i.e., the “shadow of the future” – represent crucial drivers of fertility intentions under conditions of uncertainty. Our arguments are tested empirically by exploiting the exogenous uncertainty shock provided by the COVID-19 pandemic, and unique data we collected during the Italian lockdown. Results suggest that, because of COVID-induced uncertainty, subjective perceptions and personal narratives of the future – also shaped by media “shared narratives” – gained the upper hand over the shadow of the past in influencing fertility intentions. In addition, we provide evidence of a causal impact of shared narratives of the future on fertility intentions through an online experiment simulating a “real” exposure of the respondents to a new media narrative on the expected length of the emergency.