Does health influence fertility?

Astri Syse (), Lars Dommermuth () and Rannveig K. Hart ()
Additional contact information
Rannveig K. Hart: Statistics Norway, https://www.ssb.no/en/forskning/ansatte

Discussion Papers from Statistics Norway, Research Department

Abstract: Poor health may constrain women’s capacity for active leisure, including family life and childrearing, for participation in the labor market and potentially affect preferences. Still, health remains remarkably understudied as a fertility determinant. We explore the association between health and fertility, using uptake of doctor-certified sickness absences and long-term health-related benefits as proxies for health. We examine whether compositional changes in health distributions and/or changes in the health-fertility association have contributed to the distinct fall in the total fertility rate in Norway since 2009. We use nationwide registry data on women aged 16-45 from 2004-2018. We analyse first, second and third births separately, and use annual observations with lagged timevarying covariates for education, sickness absence and long-term benefits. Income, employment and partnership status are also included in some subanalyses. Long-term benefit uptake is negatively associated with fertility, and the association weakens over time. In addition, such uptake is relatively rare, but increases slightly over time. The use of sickness absence is positively associated with fertility, and the association strengthens over time. Sickness absence uptake is common but decreases over time. It is thus unlikely that changes in women’s health and/or changes in the health-fertility association can help explain the observed decline in fertility observed after 2009. However, if the decrease in sickness absence uptake reflects a stronger labor market preference among women in fertile ages, it might help explain parts of the observed decline. Overall, the decline in fertility is most pronounced for healthy women. Health as a fertility determinant warrants further research, from other countries and with other proxies for health.

Keywords: fertility; health; sick leave; TFR; total fertility rate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 J10 J11 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2020-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ssb.no/en/forskning/discussion-papers/_attachment/412665 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ssb:dispap:921

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://www.ssb.no/e ... -influence-fertility

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Statistics Norway, Research Department P.O.Box 8131 Dep, N-0033 Oslo, Norway. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by L Maasø ().