A Home to Plan the First Child? Fertility Intentions and Housing Conditions in Italy

In Italy, the existing literature on the link between low fertility and people’s socioeconomic status has been surprisingly silent about the potential role of housing. This study aimed at filling this gap. Are Italians who are better off in terms of housing security more likely to plan to have a first child in the short run? Our results suggest that there is a clear positive gradient between the fertility intentions of couples and the degree to which they feel secure about their housing situation. The positive gradient remained substantial after we controlled for the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the couple and after we adjusted the estimates for the presence of unobserved characteristics and we took into account the endogeneity between housing and fertility. This implies that, in Italy, the housing dimension should not be disregarded when studying fertility differentials.