Female Labour Market Behaviour And Fertility

Since 1987, the investigation of the relationship between female labour market behaviour and fertility, which forms part of the research programme of the Economic Institute / Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Labour Market and Distribution Issues (CIAV) of Utrecht University, also became a part of the research programme of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI). Since then, I have been entrusted with research on this topic. In this context, I acted on a suggestion made by Frans Willekens to organize an international workshop, with the help of other members of the NIDI staff and with the administrative and organizational support of the NIDI. This resulted in the workshop "Female Labour Market Behaviour and Fertility: Preferences, Restrictions, Behaviour," held at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute in The Hague, April 20-22, 1989, under the auspices of the European Association for Population Studies (EAPS). In this workshop, demographers, econometricians, economists, psychologists and socio logists discussed the paths to a truly interdisciplinary approach to the relationship between female labour market behaviour and fertility. Such an interdisciplinary approach requires a common theoretical framework. The rational-choice framework was considered to be best suited to this purpose. As a consequence, the workshop was not only structured by what was studied, but also by how it was studied. This volume consists of the papers presented at the above-mentioned workshop, as revised by the authors in collaboration with the editors.

The book explores interlinkages between women’s employment and fertility at both a macro- and a micro-level in EU member states, Norway and Switzerland. Similarly as many other studies on the topic, it refers to the cross-country variation in the macro-context for explaining cross-country differences in women’s labour supply and fertility levels. However, in contrast to other studies, which mainly focus on Western Europe, it extends the discussion to Central and Eastern European countries. Furthermore, it looks at the macro-context from a multi-dimensional perspective, indicating its four dimensions as relevant for fertility and women’s employment choices: economic (living standards), institutional (family policies), structural (labour market structures), and cultural (social norms). A unique feature of the study is the development of indices that measure the intensity of institutional, structural, and cultural incompatibilities between women’s employment and fertility. These indices are used for ranking European countries from the perspective of the country-specific conditions for work and family reconciliation. A country where these conditions are the worst, but where women are additionally perceived as important income providers, is picked up for an in-depth empirical study of the interrelationship between fertility and women’s employment choices. Finally, against the review of theoretical concepts predominantly used for studying interdependencies between fertility and women’s labour supply the book assesses the micro-level empirical studies available on the topic and proposes an analytical approach for modelling the two variables. Thereby, it also contributes to methodological developments in the field.

This volume addresses the relationship between childbearing, paid work and work-life balance policies across Europe in the 21st century, illuminating the uncertainty and risk related to insecure labour force attachment, the incoherence of women's and men's access to education and employment and the unequal share of domestic responsibilities.