The effect of child care and part time opportunities on participation and fertility decisions in Italy

Daniela Del Boca

Journal of Population Economics, 2002, vol. 15, issue 3, 549-573

Abstract: Economic models of household behavior typically yield the prediction that increases in schooling levels and wage rates of married women lead to increases in their labor supply and reductions in fertility. In Italy, low labor market participation rates of married women are observed together with low birth rates. Our explanation involves the Italian institutional structure, particularly as reflected in rigidities and imperfections in the labor market and characteristics of the publicly-funded child care system. These rigidities tend to simultaneously increase the costs of having children and to discourage the labor market participation of married women. We analyze a model of labor supply and fertility, using panel data. The empirical results show that the availability of child care and part time work increase both the probability of working and having a child.

Keywords: Labor; market; decisions; ·; fertility; ·; child; care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C3 D1 J2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-08-02
Note: Received: 14 February 2000/Accepted: 20 February 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (296)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00148/papers/2015003/20150549.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted

Related works:
Working Paper: The Effect of Child Care and Part Time Opportunities on Participation and Fertility Decisions in Italy (2002)
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:spr:jopoec:v:15:y:2002:i:3:p:549-573

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().