Fertility postponement and labor market outcomes

Abstract

ProsPostponing childbearing helps women accumulate more work experience (human capital).Postponing childbearing strengthens women's attachment to the labor market and raises wages.Family-friendly policies can mitigate the negative effects of postponing childbearing on total fertility.Egg freezing and in-vitro fertilization may help women who delay motherhood bear children at an older age. ElEVator PitCHThe rise in the average age of women bearing their first child is a well-established demographic trend in recent decades.Postponed childbearing can have important consequences for the mother and, at a macro level, for the country as a whole.Research has focused on the effect postponing fertility has on the labor market outcomes for mothers and on the total number of children a woman has in her lifetime.Most research finds that postponing the first birth raises a mother's labor force participation and wages but may have negative effects on overall fertility, especially in the absence of supportive family-friendly policies. aUtHor's Main MEssaGEWhile postponing childbearing may be an effective strategy for women to accumulate more human capital before having a child, by increasing their labor market participation and boosting their wages, it may also create an obstacle to realizing their fertility plans.While studies find that women who postpone childbearing do have a stronger labor market attachment, they also find that these women are more likely to have fewer children.Countries may want to lessen this tradeoff by investing in family-friendly policies.Examples include the provision of public childcare services, incentives to private firms to provide childcare services, and promotion of paternal leave policies to improve the gender balance in childrearing. ConsPostponing childbearing may have negative consequences on women's total fertility.It is difficult to assess the causal effects of postponing childbearing because of unobserved differences among women.Cross-country comparative research is lacking on the impact of family-friendly policies on the motherhood wage and employment penalties.More research is needed to assess the unintended consequences of egg freezing and in-vitro fertilization, such as further postponement of childbearing. Fertility postponement and labor market outcomesPostponed childbearing increases women's labor market attachment but may reduce overall fertility Keywords: fertility postponement, labor market outcomes, completed fertility, family-friendly policies Integrity.The author declares to have observed these principles.© Massimiliano Bratti additional three months of leave to be shared between parents.As a consequence, some 90% of Icelandic fathers take paternity leave.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 15 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.