The Emergence of Procyclical Fertility: The Role of Gender Differences in Employment Risk

Sena Coskun and Husnu Dalgic

No 202227, IAB-Discussion Paper from Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]

Abstract: "Fertility in the US exhibits an increasingly more procyclical pattern. We argue that women’s breadwinner status is behind procyclical fertility: (i) women’s relative income in the family has increased over time; and (ii) women are more likely to work in relatively stable and countercyclical industries whereas men tend to work in volatile and procyclical industries. This creates a countercyclical gender income gap as women become breadwinners in recessions, producing an insurance effect of women’s income. Our quantitative framework features a general equilibrium OLG model with endogenous fertility and human capital choice. We show that the change in gender employment cyclicality can explain 38 to 44 percent of the emergence of procyclical fertility. Our counterfactual analysis shows that in a world in which men become nurses and women become construction workers, we would observe “countercyclical fertility” but at the expense of lower human capital accumulation as families lean in more towards quantity in the quality-quantity trade-off." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Keywords: USA; IAB-Open-Access-Publikation; Auswirkungen; Erwerbsbeteiligung; erwerbstätige Frauen; Familieneinkommen; Frauen; Fruchtbarkeit; generatives Verhalten; geschlechtsspezifische Faktoren; geschlechtsspezifischer Arbeitsmarkt; Konjunkturabhängigkeit; Arbeitsmarktrisiko; Arbeitsplatzgefährdung; Wirtschaftszweige; 1964-2018 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E32 J11 J13 J16 J21 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 66 pages
Date: 2022-12-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-dge, nep-gen and nep-lab
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Published in/as: The role of breadwinner women" in: Journal of monetary economics, doi:10.1016/j.jmoneco.2023.10.004

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https://doi.org/10.48720/IAB.DP.2227

Related works:
Working Paper: The Emergence of Procyclical Fertility: The Role of Gender Differences in Employment Risk (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iab:iabdpa:202227

DOI: 10.48720/IAB.DP.2227

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