Welfare Regimes and Fertility in Second Unions

Mariana Fernández Soto (), Ana Fostik () and Benoît Laplante ()
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Mariana Fernández Soto: Universidad de la República, Programa de Población, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales
Ana Fostik: Statistics Canada
Benoît Laplante: Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Centre Urbanisation Culture Société

Chapter Chapter 9 in Analyzing Contemporary Fertility, 2020, pp 199-235 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract One recent line of research points to the importance of births occurring after the dissolution of the first union for fertility. Another line of established research has shown that countries with different welfare regimes implement policies that may help or hinder family formation. In this chapter, we combine these two lines and look at the importance of births occurring into the second union in countries that have different welfare regimes. We focus on six countries chosen for their different welfare regimes: Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. We use data on union and birth histories from the Harmonized Histories dataset and information on the family policy measures implemented in these countries from the Comparative Family Policy Database. First, we use a decomposition technique to estimate the relative contributions of births occurring in the first and in the second unions to fertility among women aged 25–49 in these countries. Second, we estimate the effect of selected measures of family policy on the hazard of the first birth in the second union. Results from the decomposition show that the magnitude of the relative contribution of births occurring in the second union can be related to welfare regimes in five of the six countries, the United States being the exception. The duration of leaves has no effect on the hazard of having a child in the second union, but the value of the benefit paid during the leave increases the hazard among low-educated women regardless of parity. Family allowances increase the hazard of having a child among highly educated women who do not already have a child at the beginning of their second union, and among women who have a medium level of education regardless of parity. In all countries but the United States, the relative importance of fertility in the second union can easily be related to welfare regimes. Our estimation of the effects of policy measures shows that even with the limitations of the available data and under the strong assumption of equal effects in all countries, family policy measures seem to play a role in childbearing in the second union.

Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ssdmcp:978-3-030-48519-1_9

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-48519-1_9

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