ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relative direct and indirect effect of socioeconomic and cultural variables on fertility patterns among Soviet immigrants to Israel. It describes the impact of women's employment, education, and income with the effect of subjective attitudes about the woman's role and status in the determining family size. The causal model tested the relative direct and indirect influence of variables pertaining to the parental home on family size in the research population. The findings of Ansley J. Coale and his colleagues suggest that social changes in the Soviet Union had created by 1970 the three preconditions for a decline in fertility in all provinces of European Russia. Many Soviet demographers are concerned about the adverse effects the trend will have on the natural growth of the Russian nationality in the heterogeneous Soviet population. A rise in the woman's education, income, and employment had a great influence on a decline in the number of children in Soviet families.
