Parental retirement and fertility decisions across family policy regimes

Edoardo Frattola ()
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Edoardo Frattola: Bank of Italy

Review of Economics of the Household, 2025, vol. 23, issue 3, No 4, 933-968

Abstract: Abstract This paper investigates whether parental retirement affects the timing of adult couples’ fertility decisions and whether the effect is heterogeneous across family policy regimes in Europe. Exploiting variation in eligibility rules in a regression discontinuity design with panel data, I find a positive causal effect only in countries with weak family policies and strong family ties (i.e., in Mediterranean countries), where the result is driven by an increase in the availability of informal childcare. This finding suggests that raising the minimum retirement age might have unintended negative consequences on fertility rates by delaying the offspring generation’s childbearing decisions.

Keywords: Retirement; Fertility; Grandparents; Informal childcare; SHARE (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J14 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s11150-024-09757-y

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