Adieu Rabenmutter - The Effect of Culture on Fertility, Female Labour Supply, the Gender Wage Gap and Childcare

This paper studies the effect of cultural attitudes on childcare provision, fertility, female labour supply and the gender wage gap. Cross-country data show that fertility, female labour force participation and childcare are positively correlated with each other, while the gender wage gap seems to be negatively correlated with these variables. The paper presents a model with endogenous fertility, female labour supply and childcare choices which fits these facts. There may exist multiple equilibria: one with zero childcare provision, low fertility and female labour supply and high wage gap, and one with high childcare provision, high fertility and female labour supply and low wage gap.cultural preferences, fertility, female labour supply, wage gap, childcare

Fertility, Female Labor Supply, and Family Policy

The present paper develops a general equilibrium model with overlapping generations and endogenous fertility in order to analyze the interaction between public policy and household labor supply and fertility decisions. The model's benchmark equilibrium reflects the current family policy consisting of joint taxation of married couples, monetary transfers and in-kind benefits which reduce the time cost of children. Then we simulate alternative reforms of the tax and the child benefit system and analyze the long-run impact on fertility and female labor supply. Our simulations indicate three central results: First, policies which simply increase the family budget either via higher transfers (direct or in-kind) or via family splitting increase fertility but reduce female employment. Second, increasing tax revenues due to the introduction of individual taxation would increase female employment but reduce fertility. Third, revenue neutral policies such as a reform of the benefit structure or a move towards individual taxation combined with an increase in in-kind benefits may achieve both goals and therefore yield significant welfare gains.stochastic fertility, general equilibrium life cycle model

An explanation of the positive correlation between fertility and female employment across Western European countries

Recent literature shows the puzzling result of a positive and significant cross-country correlation between the total fertility rate and the female labour force participation rate across Western European countries. The present paper shows that this cross-country correlation becomes negative and significant, once one corrects the total fertility rate for a distortion, caused by an increasing age of childbearing, and controls in cross-country regressions for purchased child care use and female long-term unemployment. This result survives an empirical analysis in which the female labour force participation rate is treated as an endogenous variable.Total fertility rate; female labour force participation rate; purchased child care; female unemployment.

A Pooled Time-Series Analysis on the Relation Between Fertility and Female Employment.

Various authors find that in OECD countries the cross-country correlation between the total fertility rate and the female labour force participation rate turned from a negative value before the 1980s to a positive value thereafter. Based on pooled time series analysis the literature seems to agree that this change is due to unmeasured country and time heterogeneity with respect to female employment. However, the role of female employment for time and country heterogeneity remains unclear. Using data of 22 OECD countries from 1960-2000 we estimate pooled time series models of fertility and female labour force participation by applying random effects and fixed effects panel models as well as Prais-Winsten regressions with panel-corrected standard errors and autoregressive errors. Proceeding with Prais-Winsten regressions our empirical findings reveal substantial differences across countries and time periods in the effects of female employment on fertility. Initial increases in female employment strongly lowers fertility, but continued increases have a progressively less negative effect. The country heterogeneity in the effect of female employment can also be confirmed for different regions as well as for varying welfare and gender regimes.

Does economic development drive the fertility rebound in OECD countries?

We examine how far changes in fertility trends are related to ongoing economic development in OECD countries. In the light of the inverse J-shaped relationship between the human development index (HDI) and total fertility rates that was recently found by Myrskylä, Kohler and Billari (2009), we single out the impact of economic development on fertility. We empirically test the hypothesis of a convex impact of GDP per capita on fertility, using data from the OECD area that spans the years 1960 to 2007. We test the robustness of our findings by controlling for birth postponement and for different income distribution patterns. By designating a clear turning point in the relationship between economic development and fertility, we find that economic development is likely to induce a fertility rebound, but is not sufficient to lift fertility to a significantly higher level in all OECD countries. Country-specific factors explain why countries with similar GDP per capita levels achieve significantly lower or higher fertility rates than the estimated baseline, however. By decomposing GDP per capita into several variables, we identify female employment as the main factor impacting fertility, behind GDP variations. The positive association between the increase in female employment and fertility rates suggests a key role played by the changes in norms and institutions supporting the combination of work and family that go along with the process of economic development.demographic economics; fertility; economic development; female employment; economics of gender

Patterns of lowest-low fertility in Europe

In this paper we conduct descriptive aggregate analyses to revisit the relation between low and lowest-low period fertility on the one, and cohort fertility and key fertility-related behaviors---such as leaving the parental home, marriage and female labor force participation---on the other side. First, we identify a systematic pattern of lowest-low fertility that is characterized by a rapid delay of childbearing, a low progression probability after the first child (but not particularly low levels of first-birth childbearing), and a ``falling behind´´ in cohort fertility at relatively late ages. Second, our analyses show that the cross-country correlations in Europe between the total fertility level on the one side, and the total first marriage rate, the proportion of extramarital births and the female labor force participation rate on the other side have reversed during the period from 1975 to 1999. At the end of the 1990s there is also no longer evidence that divorce levels are negatively associated with fertility levels. Based on these analyses we conclude that the emergence of lowest-low fertility during the 1990s has been accompanied by a disruption or even a reversal of many well-known patterns that have been used to explain cross-country differences in fertility patterns.Europe, family formation, fertility

Religion and Fertility : The French Connection

The dataset "Enqute Mode de Vie des Franais" is the first opportunity to measure the impact of religion and religiosity on individual fertility behaviors in France. Indeed, the French laws make it very difficult to collect data on the individual's religious variables. With Poisson regressions, I show that religiosity is the sole religious variable which significantly influences fertility. To have been raised in a religious family and to be a believer do not matter either. The estimated fertility of a woman assisting offices every week is 24% higher that the expected fertility of a woman who never assist to offices. Culture is not investigated only through the impact of religion on fertility. Indeed, I explore the influence of parental fertility on the respondent's own fertility and the transmission of "Family Ties" among generations. I find that these two channels are as important as religious variables to explain fertility. Among the conclusions of usual family, economics, I find that male income has a positive impact on female fertility whereas the female income has a negative impact. The women's education negatively influences fertility in the sense that the least educated women have more children than others.Fertility, France, religion, religiosity, cultural transmission, family ties, Applied Microeconometrics.

ASIAN DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION: AN INSTRUMENTAL-VARIABLES PANEL APPROACH

We examine patterns in fertility during the demographic transition using a panel data set across 25 Asian countries for 1975-2003. The adult female literacy rate is used as an instrumental variable for the endogenous female labor force participation rate, which has been unsolved in the population literature. The preliminary panel data analysis suggests that relative cohort size is significant in explaining the decline in fertility before controlling for simultaneity bias. This result, however, may be spurious. After considering the instrumental variables estimation in the panel data structure, the age structure variable no longer plays a dominant role in explaining declining fertility rates in many Asian countries. Systematic differences were found between East and South Asia. A policy implication in South Asia is that development may reduce fertility directly through increasing income rather than indirectly through a change in female labor force participation or urbanization. In East Asia, the indirect effects dominate.Fertility, Easterlin hypothesis, Transition Economies, Relative Cohort Size, Age Structure

Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Fertility

We analyze theoretically and empirically the impact of comparative advantage in international trade on fertility. We build a model in which industries differ in the extent to which they use female relative to male labor, and countries are characterized by Ricardian comparative advantage in either female- or male-intensive goods. The main prediction of the model is that countries with comparative advantage in female-intensive goods are characterized by lower fertility. This is because female wages, and therefore the opportunity cost of child-rearing are higher in those countries. We demonstrate empirically that countries with comparative advantage in industries employing primarily women exhibit lower fertility. We use a geography-based instrument for trade patterns to isolate the causal effect of comparative advantage on fertility.Fertility, trade integration, comparative advantage, factor endowments