Abstract This paper explores how attitudes towards childbearing change after cohabitation and marriage. Entering in a union may affect attitudes towards childbearing, but at the same time individuals who are more oriented towards childbearing may be more determined to form unions. In order to disentangle the interplay between union formation and subsequent changes in attitudes towards childbearing we implement propensity score matching, which is applied to a panel data coming from a survey in Bulgaria to identify the effect of union formation on attitudes related to childbearing. This method controls for observable confounders which may affect both the probability of entering into a union and childbearing preferences, reducing selection bias. We find a positive and significant causal relationship of entering into union on attitudes towards parenthood among men, whereas the effect is weaker and often uncertain for women.

中文翻译：

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工会成立会改变保加利亚对生育的态度吗？倾向得分分析

摘要本文探讨了同居和婚姻后对分娩态度的变化。参加工会可能会影响人们对生育的态度，但与此同时，更倾向于生育的个人可能会更有决心组建工会。为了消除工会形成与随后的生育态度变化之间的相互作用，我们实施了倾向得分匹配，将其应用于来自保加利亚一项调查的面板数据，以确定工会形成对与生育相关态度的影响。此方法控制可观察到的混杂因素，这可能会影响加入工会的可能性和生育偏好，从而减少选择偏见。