Media Narratives, Economic Perceptions, and Fertility

Raffaele Guetto, University of Florence
Maria Francesca Morabito , University of Florence
Matthias Vollbracht, Media Tenor International AG
Daniele Vignoli , University of Florence

With this work, we contribute to the literature on the relationship between narratives of the economy conveyed by the media and fertility dynamics. We address this relationship for Germany, a country characterized by a relatively stable economic context, by combining individual-level data from the German-Socio-Economic Panel (G-SOEP) and Media Tenor data on economic news reported by several German media. Our analysis scrutinizes the effects of the volume and tone of economic news on fertility behaviors. In addition, we aim to disentangle the mechanisms through which the media affect fertility behaviors by evaluating the mediating role of individuals’ perceptions of the general and personal economic situation.

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 Presented in Session 13. Novel Perspectives in Fertility Research