• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Monday, July 7, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Health

More children for the high educated: Broadband Internet creates a digital fertility divide

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
April 2, 2019
in Health
Reading Time: 2 mins read
0
ADVERTISEMENT
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

When broadband comes to town, flexible work is boosted and work-life balance improves for educated women, who can choose to have more than one child, according to a study by Bocconi scholars

IMAGE

Credit: Paolo Tonato

Access to broadband Internet has a positive effect on fertility, overall life satisfaction and time spent with children. Since this effect is largely driven by higher-educated women, though, it risks to create another digital divide, according to a study by Francesco Billari and Luca Stella (Bocconi University), with Osea Giuntella (University of Pittsburgh), just published in Population Studies.

In the context of DisCont, a research project funded by the European Research Council, the scholars link data on broadband deployment in Germany to a dataset that contains retrospective life course information, including fertility histories.

After gaining access to high-speed Internet, the share of higher-educated women aged 25-45 that give birth to a child in one year passes from 7.2% to 8.7%, mostly thanks to a higher likelihood of having a second or higher-order child. Broadband Internet also positively affects their overall life satisfaction and time spent with children during weekdays.

On the contrary, lesser-educated women, at 6.3%, don’t record significant changes.

&laquoWe find that the channel through which high-speed Internet increases fertility is a better work-family balance, due to the spread of teleworking, smart working and part-time working among educated women», says Francesco Billari, a Full Professor of Demography at Bocconi University, Milan, and the DisCont Principal Investigator. High-speed Internet increases the likelihood of working from home by almost thirty per cent and facilitates part-time vs. full time, with little effects on female employment or labor force participation.

&laquoSumming up», prof. Billari concludes, &laquobroadband Internet access allows higher-educated women to better reconcile work and motherhood, which in turn may promote fertility. This may be particularly important in countries such as Germany, or the best part of Southern and Central-Eastern Europe, where total fertility is below replacement ».

The downside of these findings is that broadband Internet introduces a fertility digital divide, which excludes lesser-educated individuals, who tend to be employed in less flexible occupations. &laquoIf smart working and flexible hours are an avenue to be trodden, then, child care policies such as those recently introduced in Germany», Luca Stella says, &laquohave also proved to be effective and are to be pursued».

###

Francesco Billari, Osea Giuntella, Luca Stella, Does Broadband Internet Affect Fertility?, in Population Studies, 28 Mar 2019, doi: 10.1080/00324728.2019.1584327.

Media Contact
Fabio Todesco
[email protected]

Original Source

https://www.knowledge.unibocconi.eu/notizia.php?idArt=20638

Related Journal Article

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2019.1584327

Tags: Business/EconomicsDemographyFertilityParenting/Child Care/FamilyPersonalPolicy/EthicsQuality of LifeSocial/Behavioral ScienceSocioeconomics
Share13Tweet7Share2ShareShareShare1

Related Posts

blank

Evolving Deaminase Hotspots for Precise Cytosine Editing

July 7, 2025
Linking Body, Behavior to Atherogenic Risk Ratio

Linking Body, Behavior to Atherogenic Risk Ratio

July 5, 2025

FGF13 Shields Neurons to Halt Age-Related Hearing Loss

July 5, 2025

Glucose Metabolism Controls CD4+ T Cell Fate

July 5, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • Zheng-Rong Lu

    Pancreatic Cancer Vaccines Eradicate Disease in Preclinical Studies

    74 shares
    Share 30 Tweet 19
  • Enhancing Broiler Growth: Mannanase Boosts Performance with Reduced Soy and Energy

    72 shares
    Share 29 Tweet 18
  • AI Achieves Breakthrough in Drug Discovery by Tackling the True Complexity of Aging

    69 shares
    Share 28 Tweet 17
  • New Organic Photoredox Catalysis System Boosts Efficiency, Drawing Inspiration from Photosynthesis

    54 shares
    Share 22 Tweet 14

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Evolving Deaminase Hotspots for Precise Cytosine Editing

HIV-1 Nuclear Entry Hinges on Capsid and Pore

Soil Dryness: Timing and Impact on Photosynthesis

  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.