Work status and family planning: insights from the Italian puzzle

Fabio Sabatini

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper uses a dataset built by the author on the basis of raw data taken from different national surveys to carry out an investigation into the socio-economic determinants of couples’ childbearing decisions in Italy. Since having children is in most cases a “couple matter”, the analysis accounts for the characteristics of both the aspiring parents. Our results contradict theoretical predictions according to which the increase in the opportunity cost of motherhood connected to higher female labour participation is responsible for the fall in fertility. On the contrary, the instability of the women’s work status (i.e. their being occasional, precarious, and low-paid workers) reveals to be a significant and strong dissuasive deterrent discouraging the decision to have children. Couples with unemployed women are less likely to plan childbearing as well. Other relevant explanatory variables are age, current family size, and the strength of family ties.

Keywords: Fertility; Family planning; Childbearing; Labour market; Female participation; Labour precariousness; Social capital; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J21 J24 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-11-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-lab, nep-ltv and nep-soc
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:18851

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