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Resources, aspirations and first births during the Great Recession
Full text linkMany studies show that labor market uncertainties are important predictors of the postponement of parenthood. While most existing studies investigate the consequences of the deterioration of employment conditions in absolute terms, in this paper I test the hypothesis that relative changes in occupational conditions affect childbearing choices. In particular, building on the Easterlin Hypothesis of resources and aspirations I investigate how intergenerational mobility among American men and women during the Great Recession affected their chances of becoming parents. Using respondents' labor market trajectories from the PSID 2003-2017 data, I show that when both men and women hold an occupational position as prestigious as that held by their parents when they were growing up, they are more likely to have a first child than when they hold a downward-mobile job. However, men and women differ in how this process is moderated by aggregate labor market conditions
The causal effect of the great recession on childlessness of white American women
Full text linkMany studies have documented a negative association between macroeconomic
indicators and fertility in times of economic crisis. These studies are based on
research designs that do not allow for excluding that the observed association is
driven by confounders. The aim of the present paper is to estimate the causal
effect of the Great Recession on cohorts’ childlessness in the United States. We
apply a difference-in-difference approach to the probability of childlessness in
two pseudo-cohorts of white women who entered the age of 34–36 years old
being childless before the crisis, in 2004, and at the onset of the crisis, in 2007. Our
identification strategy relies on the assumption that these two adjacent cohorts of
women differ only because the latter cohort lived some critical years of reproductive
life during the Great Recession period. We then study how many childless women
aged 34–36 had a child when they were 37–39, between the years 2004 and 2007
for the control group and between the years 2007 and 2010 for the treatment
group. We argue that an increase of childlessness at the age 37–39 is likely to
lead to an increase in permanent childlessness, since major catch-up processes
are unlikely after age 40. We replicate the analysis on two datasets: the American
Community Survey and the Fertility Supplement of the Current Population Survey.
Our findings suggest that the Great Recession has had a positive, though mild,
effect on childlessness of white women at about the age of 40 in the US
Parental separation and children's educational attainment: Heterogeneity and rare and common educational outcomes
No full textWhile the association between parental separation and children's lower educational achievements is a robust finding, the evidence regarding its heterogeneity across social groups is mixed. Some studies show that socioeconomically advantaged families manage to shelter their pupils from the consequences of parental break-up, while others find the opposite. We contribute to this debate and sketch a structural theory of the heterogeneity of the consequences associated to parental separation on children's educational outcomes. We argue that the separation penalty and its heterogeneity across social backgrounds differ depending on the selectivity of a given educational outcome. In particular, the smallest penalty will be observed for very rare and very common outcomes. The rarity of an educational outcome depends on pupils' social background, which might produce the observed heterogeneity even if the separation penalty itself is equal across parental social background. We investigate the heterogeneity of the consequences of separation by parents' education in Spain on two children's outcomes. One outcome (enrolment in tertiary education) is rare for children in low educated families, while the other (retaking in primary and secondary education) is rare for children in highly educated families. The results show that the penalty associated to parental separation for retaking a year in primary and secondary education is larger for children of low educated mothers. No heterogeneity is found for enrolment in tertiary education
Finnish fertility: Pro- or counter-cyclical?
Full text linkScholars’ engagement with the issue of how economic fluctuations and fertility are linked re-flourished in
the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008 when birth rates plummeted in many, if not most, Western
countries. Media, policy makers’ and the larger public’s attention on the topic has grown substantially in
the past few years (Politiken, 2018). The recent trends in period fertility rates in Europe and in the US
confirm that the Great Recession was followed by a significant and widespread decline in births (Eurostat,
2018). Finland is no exception in this decline. Since 2010 the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has plummeted,
hitting an all-time low rate of 1.49 children per woman in 2017 (Figure 1; Statistics Finland, 2018). This
persistent fertility decline came largely unexpectedly since the Great Recession hit the Nordic countries to
a lesser extent compared to other regions of Europe
Couples’ paid work, state-level unemployment, and first births in the United States
Full text linkBACKGROUND While most studies analyze male’s and female’s employment separately, this study adopts a couple-level approach to relate paid work to childbearing in the United States. In addition, building on previous studies suggesting the existence of spillovers from others’ unemployment, I explore whether state-level unemployment rates moderate this association. OBJECTIVE First, this study investigates how couples’ paid work, i.e., both partners’ combination of employment, working hours, inactivity, or unemployment, is associated with first birth. Second, the study tests whether this association varies depending on state unemployment rates across the decades around the Great Recession. METHOD Using the 2003–2017 PSID waves, the probability of a first child across couples’ job constellations and aggregate labor market conditions is estimated using a linear probability model. A number of robustness checks are run, including fixed effects models. RESULTS Both men’s and women’s unemployment similarly lower the probability of a first birth, as does the male breadwinner model. Full-time dual-earner couples display the greatest probability of a first birth. However, rising unemployment rates greatly reduce the advantage of dual-earners compared to single-earner couples. CONCLUSIONS In a context of low public support for childbearing, couples tend to rely on the paid fulltime work of both partners to enter parenthood. Moreover, women’s work seems as relevant as that of their partners in shaping household childbearing decisions. Aggregate unemployment attenuates these differences, reducing the advantage of full-time dual work
Spread-ing Uncertainty, Shrinking Birth Rates: A Natural Experiment for Italy
Full text linkMany previous studies have documented the procyclicality of fertility to business cycles or labour
market indicators in Western countries. However, part of the recent fertility decline witnessed since
the Great Recession has been left unexplained by traditional measures. The present study advances
the notion that birth postponement might have accelerated in response to rising uncertainty, which
fuelled negative expectations and declining levels of confidence about the future. To provide empirical
support for the causal effect of perceived uncertainty on birth rates, we focus on Italy’s sovereign
debt crisis of 2011–2012 as a natural experiment. Perceived uncertainty is measured using Google
trends for the term ‘spread’—which acted as somewhat of a barometer for the crisis both in the media
and everyday conversations—to capture the general public’s degree of concern about the stability of
Italian public finances. A regression discontinuity in time identifies the effect of perceived uncertainty
on birth rates in Italy as a drop between 1.5% and 5%, depending on model specification
Connubium (Who Marries Whom?)
No full textThe question “Who marries whom?” refers to patterns of partner choice. The tendency to marry (or to enter a long-term relationship such as cohabitation with) a person who belongs to the same social group, or who is similar with regard to certain characteristics, is also known as homogamy. Sociologists have traditionally been interested in three individual characteristics that can be important in the choice of a partner: race/ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic resources. Studying patterns of partner choice is important because it allows us to evaluate the degree of openness of the boundaries of different ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic groups. The more frequent marriage between subjects who differ with respect to the characteristics of the group is, the more open the group
The fertility response to the Great Recession in Europe and the United States: Structural economic conditions and perceived economic uncertainty
Full text linkBackground: This study further develops Goldstein et al.'s (2013) analysis of the fertility response to the Great Recession in western economies. Objective: The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the fertility reaction to different indicators of the crisis. Beyond the structural labor market conditions, I investigate the dependence of fertility rates on economic policy uncertainty, government financial risk, and consumer confidence. Methods: Following Goldstein et al. (2013), I use log-log models to assess the elasticity of age-, parity-, and education-specific fertility rates to an array of indicators. Besides the inclusion of a wider set of explanatory variables, I include more recent data (2000−2013) and I enlarge the sample to 31 European countries plus the United States. Results: Fertility response to unemployment in some age- and parity-specific groups has been, in more recent years, larger than estimated by Goldstein et al. (2013). Female unemployment has also been significantly reducing fertility rates. Among uncertainty measures, the drop in consumer confidence is strongly related to fertility decline and in Southern European countries the fertility response to sovereign debt risk is comparable to that of unemployment. Economic policy uncertainty is negatively related to TFR even when controlling for unemployment. Conclusions: Theoretical and empirical investigation is needed to develop more tailored measures of economic and financial insecurity and their impact on birth rates. Contribution: The study shows the nonnegligible influence of economic and financial uncertainty on birth rates during the Great Recession in Western economies, over and above that of structural labor market conditions
Joint Family and Work Trajectories and Multidimensional Wellbeing
Full text linkInformed by the life course perspective, this paper investigates whether and how employment and family trajectories are jointly associated with subjective, relational and financial wellbeing later in life. We draw on data from the Swiss Household Panel which combines biographical retrospective information on work, partnership and childbearing trajectories with 19 annual waves containing a number of wellbeing indicators as well as detailed socio-demographic and social origin information. We use sequence analysis to identify the main family and work trajectories for men and women aged 20-50 years old. We use OLS regression models to assess the association between those trajectories and their interdependency with wellbeing. Results reveal a joint association between work and family trajectories and wellbeing at older age, even net of social origin and pre-trajectory resources. For women, but not for men, the association is also not fully explained by proximate (current family and work status) determinants of wellbeing. Women's stable full-time employment combined with traditional family trajectories yields a subjective wellbeing premium, whereas childlessness and absence of a stable partnership over the life course is associated with lower levels of financial and subjective wellbeing after 50 especially in combination with a trajectory of weak labour market involvement. Relational wellbeing is not associated with employment trajectories, and only weakly linked to family trajectories among men
Gender and socioeconomic inequalities in health and wellbeing across age in France and Switzerland
Full text linkThere is increasing evidence that wellbeing is unequally distributed across sociodemographic
groups in contemporary societies. However, less is known about the
divergence across social groups of trajectories of wellbeing across age groups.
This issue is of great relevance in contexts characterised by changing population
structures and growing imbalances across and within generations, and in which
ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to have a happy and healthy life course
is a primary welfare goal. In this study, we investigate wellbeing trends in France
and Switzerland across age, gender, and socioeconomic status groups. We use two
household surveys (the Sant ́e et Itin ́eraires Professionnels and the Swiss Household
Panel) to compare the unfolding inequalities in health and wellbeing across age
groups in two rich countries. We view wellbeing as multidimensional, following
the literature highlighting the importance of considering dierent dimensions and
measures of wellbeing. Thus, we investigate a number of outcomes, including
dierent measures of physical and mental health, as well as of relational wellbeing,
using a linear regression model and a linear probability model. Our findings show
interesting country and dimension-specific heterogeneities in the development of
health and wellbeing over age. While our results indicate that there are gender and
educational inequalities in both Switzerland and France, and that gender inequalities
in mental health accumulate with age in both countries, we also find that educational
inequalities in health and wellbeing remain rather stable across age groups
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