The Impact of Household Socio-Economic Characteristics on Women's Fertility in Iran

In recent years, decreasing fertility in Iran has become one of the demographic problems which has attracted the attention of policymakers. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of various household characteristics on the fertility of women in Iran. For this, the study estimates a generalized ordered logit by using secondary data from Household's Income and Expenditure survey over 2005-2014 and Stata software. The results of the study indicate that in crease in the age at the first birth, being son the first child, increase in the years of parental education, urbanization and improvement in health status of the household have a negative effect on the probability of fertility. Also the finding shows that increase in household income, employment of head of the household and the household being covered by insurance lead to increase the probability of women's fertility. The result of the study shows that households tend to have only 2 children and less than 2 children. This result can be interpreted according to the theoretical framework that there is a substitution of quality instead of quantity on the behavior of fertility of Iranian households.