Interdependencies Between Fertility And Women S Labour Supply

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.

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.

This book discusses the relationship between women's labour force participation and fertility rates in developed nations. It shows a positive relationship between women's workforce participation and childbirth. It theorises a new approach to explaining this 'fertility paradox' that looks at institutional factors influencing gender equality in developed nations. The book analyses a range of institutional variables that impact the positive relationship between female employment and fertility rates, including labour market institutions, social policies and welfare state institutions (family policies, active labour market programs and public sector employment) as well as household gender dynamics. Written for both academics and policy-makers, this book has theoretical relevance for research on gender and work, and also for policies aimed at increasing women's employment and redressing low fertility, which are important issues in many developed nations.

In the present stage of international capitalist development, women are increasingly being drawn into paid employment by multinational and state investment in the Third World. This volume investigates the interrelations between women's participation in the urban wage economy and their productive and reproductive roles in the household and family. It brings together a selection of important recent research on all major regions of the developing world by leading scholars in this emerging field. It argues that the household itself is an important determinant of the character and timing of women's labour force participation, and it assesses the extent to which family patterns can be expected to change as women increasingly work outside the home.

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.

We estimate the causal relationship between family size and labour market outcomes for families in low fertility and low female employment regime. Family size is instrumented using twinning and gender composition of the first two children. Among families with at least one child we identify the average causal effect of an additional child on mother's employment to be -7.1 percentage points. However, we find no effect of additional children on female employment among families with two or more kids. Heterogeneity analysis suggests no causal effects of fertility on female employment among mothers with less than college education and older mothers (born before 1978). Furthermore, we find evidence for the interaction of family size with maternal education and age. An unintuitive feature of our finding is that we identify a positive bias of OLS estimates for highly educated mothers and for mothers born after 1977. -- labour supply ; family size ; female employment.

The relationship between fertility and the participation rate of women in the workforce is an increasingly important area of study for economists, demographers and policy-makers. Recent data show important differences in the relationship between employment rates of women and fertility across Europe. For example, in southern Europe, low fertility rates are combined with low rates of female participation. In contrast, Nordic countries are experiencing relatively high fertility rates combined with high female labour market participation. Social Policies, Labour Markets and Motherhood analyses the effects of policies aimed to reconcile motherhood and labour market participation. Making extensive use of European Community Household Panel data, it compares the outcomes of policies in several European countries, analysing why they succeed in some environments but not in others. It will be of interest to researchers, policy-makers and graduate students working on labour markets, population economics, demography and the methodology of applied microeconomics.