CIREQ-McConnell Interdisciplinary Workshop: Fertility, Labor Markets and Family Decisions
The workshop featured six speakers from sociology and economics. Kristen Harknett (U. of California, San Francisco, Sociology) examined the disruptive impact of precarious work conditions on family formation,
cohabitation and marital stability using data from the NLS and the Shift Project. The Shift Project data set contains detailed information on work scheduling alongside reports on parenting behaviors from 2016 to 2019 at 129 of the largest retail and food service firms in the U.S.Lisa Dettling (Federal Reserve Board) and Melissa Kearney examined the link between fertility, income, unemployment, and employment insurance (UI). They find that on average babies born in recessions are healthier, but that infant health is negatively affected by the mother’s unemployment rate when they are in utero. UI more than offset the negative effects coming from the loss of income due to unemployment. UI would have to be 70-80% of the income to erase the negative effect on infant health. These effects are stronger earlier in the pregnancy.
Joshua Lewis (U.de Montréal, economics), Andriana Bellou and Emanuela Cardia examined the impact of the Great Depression on fertility changes between the 1930s and 1960s. Young women decreased fertility during the 1930s and entered the labor market in large numbers. They remained or re-entered in the labor markets throughout the 1950s reducing opportunities for young women, thus contributing to the baby boom. Their retirement created new opportunities and contributed to the subsequent baby bust.
Jessamyn Schaller (Claremont McKenna College, Economics and Finance) and Kasey Buckles examined cross-country evidence between 1990 and 2021 on the association between employment and declining fertility outcomes.
Brauner-Otto (McGill, Sociology) and Stone investigated the motherhood penalty in Nepal. Work History Calendars collected as part of the Chitwan Valley Family Study yield longitudinal data that allow for rigorous examination of whether childbearing disrupts women’s employment. This is the first such study in a low-income context. Analyses revealed that women in rural Nepal experience a motherhood penalty of roughly 20-30%, much greater than estimates based on cross-sectional data. This penalty is driven by women working in salaried jobs and does not appear for those working in low-skill, wage labour agricultural jobs. The largest penalties are seen for employment rates, but more moderate penalties do exist for work intensity.
Finally, Monica Grant (U.of Wisconsin-Madison, Sociology) presented evidence on fertility intentions and uncertainty using survey data from rural Malawi. Malawi presents some of the most erratic rainfall contexts, with 70% of the population relying on rain-fed subsistence agriculture. Between 1990 and 2022, the region experienced a drastic decline in fertility, from 6.7% in 1990 to 4.4 in 2015 and to a projected 3.98 in 2022. Monica examined how rainfall fluctuations, environmental uncertainty and the Idai cyclone affected fertility. Using Malawi demographic data between 2000 and 2015, rainfall data and 65 interviews in 2019, she finds that after the cyclone Idai (March 2019) almost all respondents reported crop loss and 90% of respondents said that they used modern contraception. In response to these drastic climatic changes, families increased the spacing among children and reduced family size.
