Theories predict that the timing of childbearing and number of children born are determined by multiple socio‐economic factors. Despite this, many methods cannot investigate the interrelationships between these determinants, including the direct and indirect influence that they have on fertility over the life course. Here we use the parametric g‐formula to examine the interdependent influences of time‐varying socio‐economic processes—education, employment status and partnership status—on fertility. To demonstrate this approach, we study a cohort of women who were born in the UK in 1970. Our results show that socio‐economic processes play an important role in determining fertility, not only directly but also indirectly. We show that increasing attendance in higher education has a largely direct effect on early childbearing up to age 25 years, resulting in a substantial increase in childlessness. However, childbearing at later ages is dominated by an indirect effect of education on fertility, via partnership status and employment status, that is twice as large as the direct effect. We also use the g‐formula to examine bias due to unobserved heterogeneity, and we demonstrate that our results appear to be robust. We conclude that the method provides a valuable tool for mediation analysis in studies of interdependent life course processes.

中文翻译：

---

对生育率的社会经济决定因素进行建模：使用参数g公式的中介分析

理论预测，生育的时机和分娩的数量是由多种社会经济因素决定的。尽管如此，许多方法仍无法调查这些决定因素之间的相互关系，包括它们对生命过程中生育力的直接和间接影响。在这里我们使用参数g用于研究时变的社会经济过程-教育，就业状况和伙伴关系状况-对生育率的相互依存影响的公式。为了证明这种方法，我们研究了一组1970年在英国出生的妇女。我们的结果表明，社会经济过程不仅直接影响人口，而且间接影响人口的生育率。我们表明，增加高等教育入学率对25岁以下的早育产生了很大的直接影响，从而导致无子女人数大幅增加。但是，高龄生育受教育对生育的间接影响（通过伙伴关系地位和就业状况）占主导地位，是直接影响的两倍。我们也用g用于检查由于未观察到的异质性而产生的偏差的公式，并且我们证明了我们的结果似乎是可靠的。我们得出结论，该方法为相互依赖的生命过程研究中的中介分析提供了有价值的工具。