Women's wages and fertility revisited. Evidence from Norway

Tom Kornstad () and Marit Rønsen
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Marit Rønsen: Statistics Norway, https://www.ssb.no/en/forskning/ansatte

Discussion Papers from Statistics Norway, Research Department

Abstract: Since the 1960s, Beckers' New Home Economics has provided a central theoretical framework for studies of fertility behaviour. New Home Economics predict a negative effect of female wages on fertility. This prediction has been tested in a number of studies over the past decades, but the results are far from unanimous. In this paper we review past evidence of the impact of female wages on their childbearing behaviour and supply new evidence from Norway. We estimate a simultaneous hazard rate model of transitions to first, second and third birth, including predicted wage as a time-dependent variable. Using a very large dataset covering all women born in Norway during the period 1955-74, we find that timing of births is associated with wage changes. The wage effect on the log hazard is U-shaped for all the four 5-year cohorts we are studying, but the effect varies across cohorts and parity. We also find that the relationship between timing of births and wages are not very sensitive to the omission of the women's non-labour income.

Keywords: female fertility; wages; non-labor income; hazard model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-his, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-ltv
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ssb:dispap:784

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