Fertility and Media Narratives of the Economy: Evidence from the Italian News Coverage

In this paper, we argue that media-conveyed economic narratives are crucial for understanding contemporary fertility dynamics, net of objective economic constraints. Individuals use these narratives to project themselves into an actionable imagined future, and take decisions that may be relatively independent from their actual economic situation. We test such a hypothesis for Italy by combining individual-level data from the 2009 and 2016 releases of the nationally-representative Family and Social Subjects Survey with Media Tenor data on the coverage of the economy in the evening newscast of Italian TV’s most-viewed channel (Rai 1). Our findings reveal that both the incidence and tone of news reports on the state of the economy are associated with fertility behavior. An increase in the number of negative economic news items is negatively associated with fertility, whereas an increase in positive items is positively correlated to fertility. Interestingly, when positive news items outnumber negative ones, an increase in the share of economic reports is positively associated with fertility. These associations are statistically significant and substantially relevant, net of traditional individual and contextual socioeconomic fertility correlates. Overall, our findings bolster the claim that media-conveyed narratives of the economy influence fertility behaviors.