Update: See below....

The World Values Survey has a lot of data broken down by subjective social class. One of these asks how many children an individual has. So I thought it might be of interested to inspect WVS 5, generally taken around 2005, and compare differences by class in term of children. Of course there might be differences in the age breakdowns of the different classes, so that controlling for age there might be greater differences than evident. But as a coarse I thought it would be of interest. Because the data is in proportions I added up the percentage with 3 or more children in class (above replacement). For a few selected nations I calculated the mean for each class (I used WVS 3 and 4 to supplement).*

I didn't go into this with any particular hypothesis or expectation, but I'm going to explore particular questions in future posts....

Date below.

% Who have 3 or more children by class (WVS 5)
	Upper middle	Lower middle	Working	Lower
Italy	12.2	13.2	13.7	26.7
Spain	14.4	14.2	26	53.9
Canada	26.2	27.3	33	26.1
Japan	22	23.1	21.7	25.6
South Africa	23.2	26.3	29.3	34.9
Australia	28.8	35.5	35.6	51.6
Sweden	22.6	19.6	23.1	19.2
Argentina	15.2	24.6	35.4	49.7
Finland	24.1	26.2	24.3	23.2
South Korea	13.3	21.8	31.8	28.3
Poland	11	21.2	23.9	31.7
Chile	28	33.3	46.4	47.3
India	40.6	44.2	45.3	59.3
Bulgaria	6.9	4.7	7	22.8
Romania	11.4	15.3	21.6	36.4
China	17.3	22.4	26.7	30.9
Taiwan	24.3	28	43.2	64.5
Turkey	22.5	32	31.4	54.6
Ukraine	3.2	7.8	8	9.6
Peru	29.9	28.7	37.3	53.2
Ghana	21.9	28.1	30.5	41.5
Moldova	12.2	15	26.4	26.5
Georgia	10.9	16.7	24.8	26
Indonesia	29.7	31.1	32.8	43.4
Vietnam	32.9	31.9	34.5	38.4
Serbia	10.3	8.1	10.5	14.5
Egypt	43.9	52.4	57.7	61.8
Morocco	22.7	40.3	44.8	48
Jordan	68.8	71.9	63.5	61.8
Iraq	48.8	45.8	53.2	52.5
Trinidad	24.7	30.2	32	48
Malaysia	29.8	34.1	28.1	41.4
Burkina Faso	27.9	33.4	39.9	44.7
Ethiopia	16.7	10.7	18.7	17.8
Mali	50.3	45.7	57.7	62.5
Rwanda	31.8	42.7	43	44.3
Zambia	18.3	26.5	22.9	39.7
Germany	15.6	19.1	22.6	21.7
WVS 3 & 4
Finland	23.2	24.1	16.8	26.7
Norway	23.6	23.9	25	27.3
Sweden	20.3	19	23.3	24.7
Mean number of children by class
WVS 5	Upper middle	Lower middle	Working	Lower
Sweden	1.58	1.55	1.62	1.56
Finland	1.76	1.64	1.6	1.53
Italy	1.12	1.3	1.25	1.69
Spain	1.23	1.27	1.89	2.57
Canada	1.7	1.74	2.07	1.88
Japan	1.55	1.72	1.59	1.05
South Korea	1.35	1.72	1.85	1.86
Argentina	1.23	1.61	2.24	2.61
WVS 3 & 4	Upper middle	Lower middle	Working	Lower
Finland	1.44	2.45	1.72	1.79
Norway	1.64	1.66	1.73	1.65
Sweden	1.47	1.42	1.67	1.63
Spain	1.31	1.48	1.73	2.15
Argentina	1.29	1.81	2.35	2.77
Canada	1.66	2.01	1.97	1.87
Japan	1.41	1.69	1.59	1.59
United States	1.76	1.6	1.77	N < 50, omitted
Mean # of children USA from GSS, whites age 50 and over (year 2000 and after)
Graduate degre	Bachelor	Junior College	High School	Less than High School
1.95	2.12	2.41	2.48	3.07

Readers with insights about a specific nation (because you actually know something, not rank speculation) are welcome to clarify. I was struck by the differences between Scandinavia and southern Europe. Interestingly, both Chile and Argentina exhibit the southern European pattern.

Update: Mean fertility by subjective class isn't too hard to calculate. But the formatting is kind of crappy, so I put the table here. All from WVS 5. Remember that the N's for "Upper Class" are almost always very small, so I'd ignore those. I'm pretty sure that the survey sample for many Third World countries are of higher SES than the population median, so don't get too trusting of the specific numbers, but rather how the rank orders relate to each other up and down the social ladder.

Note: CSV file.

* I should have calculated the mean for each nation, but it's rather tedious.

Labels: World Values Survey