Ideational Factors and Life Course Events

This book deals with a problem of crucial importance in the study of demographic choices and sociology, i.e. the mutual relationship between ideational factors (value, attitudes and other measures of individuals' evaluation of the situation, such as anomie dimensions) studied in the recent demographic literature. Thanks to a recent survey led by the Max Planck Institute of Demographic Research in Rostock, the book focuses on Bulgaria, a post communist country with very low fertility. The common methodological approach of the book is to unravel causal links by using propensity score matching to control for selection on observed variables combined with strategies to address the impact of unobservable confounders.