Parental retirement and fertility decisions across family policy regimes

Edoardo Frattola ()
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Edoardo Frattola: Bank of Italy

No 1417, Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

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. I use SHARE data for the period 2004-2018 and consider 11 countries belonging to three different regimes (Continental, Mediterranean and Nordic). Results from a RDD on a balanced panel of dynasties suggest that parental retirement has a significant and positive causal effect only in Mediterranean countries, where it is driven by an increase in the availability of informal childcare. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that parental support matters more in countries with weaker family policies and stronger family ties, and hint that increases in retirement age might have unintended negative consequences on fertility rates in Southern Europe through an effect on the timing of fertility.

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: 2023-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-eur
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1417_23

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