The interplay of employment uncertainty and education in explaining second births in Europe

Periods of high and persistent unemployment since the late 1980s as well as an upward trend in the share of temporary employment characterize recent labor market instability in Europe. This paper analyzes the associations between timing to a second birth and changing economic environment. In particular, it focuses in understanding what dimensions of economic uncertainty affect women with different educational background. First it employs time varying measures of aggregate market conditions for women in twelve European countries as well as micro-measures of each woman’s labor market history in a proportional hazard model of second births. Both individual and aggregate unemployment as well as temporary employment are coupled with later second births. Unemployment slows down childbearing plans, particularly for the least educated, whereas holding a very short contract deters the most educated. Second, I use the 2006 Spanish Fertility Survey to show how education and the economic conditions - provincial unemployment and share of temporary employment- faced by women as they enter the labor market in their early twenties are connected with their timing to second births.education, employment, Europe, second births, uncertainty

Age at Migration, Language and Fertility Patterns among Migrants to Canada

This paper explores the fertility decisions of Canadian immigrants using a 20 percent sample of the Canadian Census of Population for the years 1991 through 2006. We focus on those individuals that migrated as children and on their age at arrival to assess their process of assimilation in terms of fertility. Our analysis does not show any sharp discontinuity in fertility by age at migration as sometimes observed on education or labor market outcomes. Instead, there is an inverted U shape relationship between age of migration and immigrant fertility, with those migrating in their late teens having the highest fertility rates when compared to natives. This pattern appears among migrants from all origins – although their fertility levels differ. Results suggests that language acquisition is not a key mechanism through which age at immigration affects fertility – fertility behavior of immigrants with an official mother tongue also differs from that of natives. Rather fertility assimilation seems to be associated with education decisions. College graduates arriving to Canada anytime before adulthood behave as their native peers.age at migration, migration, fertility, language

The role of language in shaping international migration

Fluency in (or ease to quickly learn) the language of the destination country plays a key role in the transfer of human capital from the source country to another country and boosts the immigrant’s rate of success at the destination’s labor market. This suggests that the ability to learn and speak a foreign language might be an important factor in the migration decision. We use a novel dataset on immigration flows and stocks of foreigners in 30 OECD destination countries from 223 source countries for the years 1980–2009 and a wide range of linguistic indicators to study the role of language in shaping international migration. Specifically, we investigate how both linguistic distance and linguistic diversity, as a proxy for the “potential” ease to learn a new language and to adapt to a new context, affect migration. We find that migration rates increase with linguistic proximity and the result is robust to the inclusion of genetic distance as a proxy for cultural proximity and to the use of multiple measures of linguistic distance. Interestingly, linguistic proximity matters more for migrants moving into non-English speaking destinations than to English-speaking countries. The likely higher proficiency of the average migrant in English rather than in other languages may diminish the relevance of the linguistic proximity indicators to English speaking destinations. Finally, destinations that are linguistically more diverse and polarized attract fewer migrants than those with a single language; whereas more linguistic polarization at origin seems to act as a push factor.International migration, language.

The role of language in shaping international migration

Fluency in (or ease to quickly learn) the language of the destination country plays a key role in the transfer of human capital from the source country to another country and boosts the immigrant's rate of success at the destination's labor market. This suggests that the ability to learn and speak a foreign language might be an important factor in the migration decision. We use a novel dataset on immigration flows and stocks of foreigners in 30 OECD destination countries from 223 source countries for the years 1980-2009 and a wide range of linguistic indicators to study the role of language in shaping international migration. Specifically, we investigate how both linguistic distance and linguistic diversity, as a proxy for the "potential" ease to learn a new language and to adapt to a new context, affect migration. We find that migration rates increase with linguistic proximity and the result is robust to the inclusion of genetic distance as a proxy for cultural proximity and to the use of multiple measures of linguistic distance. Interestingly, linguistic proximity matters more for migrants moving into non-English speaking destinations than to English-speaking countries. The likely higher proficiency of the average migrant in English rather than in other languages may diminish the relevance of the linguistic proximity indicators to English speaking destinations. Finally, destinations that are linguistically more diverse and polarized attract fewer migrants than those with a single language; whereas more linguistic polarization at origin seems to act as a push factor.International migration, language

Are You Being Served?: Political Accountability and Quality of Government

This paper explores, both formally and empirically, the political accountability mechanisms that lie behind the varying levels of public corruption and of effective governance taking place across nations. The first section develops a principal-agent model in which good governance is a function of the extent to which citizens can hold political officials accountable for their actions. Although policy-makers may have strong incentives to appropriate parts of the citizens` income, well-designed institutions (those increasing both informational flows and elite competitiveness) boost political accountability and reduce the space left for the appropriation of rents. The following sections of the paper test the model. The presence of democratic mechanisms of control and an increasingly informed electorate, measured through the frequency of newspaper readership, explain considerably well the distribution of corrupt practices and governmental ineffectiveness in three types of data sets: a large cross-section of countries in the late 1990s for which an extensive battery of governance indicators has been recently developed by Kaufmann et al. (1999a); a panel data set for the period 1980-95 and about 100 nations on corruption and bureaucratic quality based on experts` rankings; and corruption data for the cross-section of US states in the period 1977-95.

Differences in desired and actual fertility: an economic analysis of the Spanish case

Family size is the outcome of sequential decisions influenced both by preferences and by ongoing changes in the environment where a family lives. During the last two decades the gap between the number of children women prefer and their actual fertility has widened in Spain. The paper uses the 1985 and 1999 Spanish Fertility Surveys to study whether the tightening of the labor market and worsening of economic conditions in Spain during the last twenty years are important determinants of this change. I find that women facing high unemployment rates in their mid-twenties tend to restrict their fertility below their ideal level. Among working-women, the stability of a public sector job lessens the difficulties of balancing work and family and of achieving preferred fertility. Temporary contracts work in the opposite direction. Findings are robust to the inclusion of controls for the use of family planning as well as within-couple discrepancies in either preferences or religious affiliation

Marital Fertility and Religion : Recent Changes in Spain

Since the onset of democracy in 1975, both total fertility and Mass attendance rates in Spain have dropped dramatically. I use the 1985 and 1999 Spanish Fertility Surveys to study whether the significance of religion in fertility behavior – both in family size and in the spacing of births – has changed. While in the 1985 SFS family size was similar among practicing and non-practicing Catholics, practicing Catholics portray significantly higher fertility during recent years. In the context of lower church participation, religiosity has acquired a more relevant meaning for demographic behavior. Among the youngest generation, non-practicing Catholics behave as those without affiliation. The small group of Protestants and Muslims has the highest fertility and interfaith unions are less fertile

Immigrants and Demography: Marriage, Divorce, and Fertility

This is a draft chapter for B. R. Chiswick and P. W. Miller (eds.) Handbook on the Economics of International Migration. It discusses some of the data and methodological challenges to estimating trends in family formation and union dissolution as well as fertility among immigrants, and examines the evidence collected from the main studies in the area. The literature on immigrant family formation is diverse but perhaps the key findings highlighted in this chapter are that outcomes depend greatly on the age at migration and on the cultural norms immigrants bring with them and their distance to those of the host country. With regard to marriage we focus on the determinants of intermarriage, the stability of these unions, and the timing of union formation. The last section of the chapter reviews, among other things, a set of mechanisms that may explain the fertility behavior of first generation immigrants; namely, selection, disruption and adaptation. The section ends with a focus on the second generation

Age at migration, language and fertility patterns among migrants to Canada

This paper explores the fertility decisions of Canadian immigrants using a 20 percent sample of the Canadian Census of Population for the years 1991 through 2006. We focus on those individuals that migrated as children and on their age at arrival to assess their process of assimilation in terms of fertility. Our analysis does not show any sharp discontinuity in fertility by age at migration as sometimes observed on education or labor market outcomes. Instead, there is an inverted U shape relationship between age of migration and immigrant fertility, with those migrating in their late teens having the highest fertility rates when compared to natives. This pattern appears among migrants from all origins - although their fertility levels differ. Results suggests that language acquisition is not a key mechanism through which age at immigration affects fertility - fertility behavior of immigrants with an official mother tongue also differs from that of natives. Rather fertility assimilation seems to be associated with education decisions. College graduates arriving to Canada anytime before adulthood behave as their native peers

The role of language in shaping international migration

Fluency in (or ease to quickly learn) the language of the destination country plays a key role in the transfer of human capital from the source country to another country and boosts the immigrant's rate of success at the destination's labor market. This suggests that the ability to learn and speak a foreign language might be an important factor in the migration decision. We use a novel dataset on immigration flows and stocks of foreigners in 30 OECD destination countries from 223 source countries for the years 1980-2009 and a wide range of linguistic indicators to study the role of language in shaping international migration. Specifically, we investigate how both linguistic distance and linguistic diversity, as a proxy for the potential ease to learn a new language and to adapt to a new context, affect migration. We find that migration rates increase with linguistic proximity and the result is robust to the inclusion of genetic distance as a proxy for cultural proximity and to the use of multiple measures of linguistic distance. Interestingly, linguistic proximity matters more for migrants moving into non-English speaking destinations than to English-speaking countries. The likely higher proficiency of the average migrant in English rather than in other languages may diminish the relevance of the linguistic proximity indicators to English speaking destinations. Finally, destinations that are linguistically more diverse and polarized attract fewer migrants than those with a single language; whereas more linguistic polarization at origin seems to act as a push factor