Immigrant supply of marketable child care and native fertility in Italy

R. D. Mariani and Furio Rosati

Journal of Demographic Economics, 2022, vol. 88, issue 4, 503-533

Abstract: The availability of child-care services has often been advocated as one of the instruments to counter the fertility decline observed in many high-income countries. In the recent past, large inflows of low-skilled migrants have substantially increased the supply of child-care services. In this paper, we examine if immigration has actually affected fertility exploiting the natural experiment occurred in Italy in 2007, when a large inflow of migrants—many of them specialized in the supply of child care—arrived unexpectedly. With a difference-in-differences method, we show that immigrant female workers have increased native births by a number that ranges roughly from 2% to 4%. We validate our result by the implementation of an instrumental variable approach and several robustness tests, all concluding that the increase in the supply of child-care services by immigrant women has positively affected native fertility.

Date: 2022
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Journal Article: Immigrant supply of marketable child care and native fertility in Italy (2022)
Working Paper: Immigrant Supply of Marketable Child Care and Native Fertility in Italy (2021)
Working Paper: Immigrant Supply of Marketable Child Care and Native Fertility in Italy (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:demeco:v:88:y:2022:i:4:p:503-533_2

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