A Natural Experiment on Job Insecurity and Fertility in France

Clark, Andrew; Lepinteur, Anthony

A Natural Experiment on Job Insecurity and Fertility in France

Abstract: Job insecurity can have wide-ranging consequences outside of the labour market. A 1999 rise in the French layoff tax paid by large private firms when they laid off older workers made younger workers less secure; this insecurity reduced their fertility by 3.7 percentage points (with a 95% confidence interval between 0.7 and 6.6 percentage points). Reduced fertility is only found at the intensive margin: job insecurity reduces family size but not the probability of parenthood itself. Our results also suggest negative selection into parenthood, as this fertility effect does not appear for low-income and less-educated workers.

Keywords: Employment protection; Layoff tax; Perceived Job Security; Difference-in-Differences; Fertility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published in Review of Economics and Statistics, 2022, 104 (2), pp.386-398. ⟨10.1162/rest_a_00964⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-02973086

DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_00964

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