Reproductive Intentions: individual and contextual determinants

The importance of contextual effects in understanding demographic and particularly reproductive behaviour is widely known. Usually available Italian data do not allow examination of territorial details further than that on a municipal scale, so, forcing to consider little informative data about the context. In this paper, suitable data sources referring to sub-municipal detail, like that defined by 20 decentralised areas of an Italian metropolitan area (city of Milan), are used. So very informative contextual data are obtained. Through these types of data, how reproductive intentions are influenced also by contextual factors is examined. Results show that, besides the importance of individual preferences in reproductive choices, the effect of the context in which everyone lives must also be taken into account.