Securing women's employment: A fertility booster in European countries?

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This article gives evidence that differences in completed fertility among European countries emergemainly as a result of fewer women having a second child in low fertility countries and analyses theimpact of women’s employment on the probability of second child birth. With longitudinal data fromthe European Survey of Income and Living conditions (EU-SILC) and aggregated data from theOECD Family Database, we find that, on average within European countries, women in stableemployment have a significantly higher probability of second childbirth than inactive or unemployedwomen. However, while female employment generally favours a transition to second childbirth inhigh-fertility countries, the impact is heterogenous in low-fertility countries. This points to a work-lifebalance conflict that is stronger in low-fertility countries. To address this issue, multilevel models arerun to compare the role of various policies: not surprisingly, they show that childcare policies – whichare the most effective policies to secure women’s employment – are the most likely to encouragecouples to enlarge their families and that the positive effect of stable employment on fertility isreinforced by this policy.