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Female labor force participation and fertility differentials

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2019

Irakli Japaridze
Irakli Japaridze*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, McGill University, Room 414, Leacock Building, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T7, Canada
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

US women, on average, had approximately two children in both the 1930s and in the 1970s, yet the fertility distribution in the 1930s was less concentrated. This implies change in reproductive behavior, which cannot be captured by models focusing on average fertility. To explain these changes, I have developed a model that makes a distinction between sons and daughters. In this model, the female labor force participation rate is the probability of each girl becoming an employed woman. This endogenizes the empirically observed difference in the propensity for an all-girl household to have another child compared to an all-boy household, generating large fertility differentials at low participation rates. Higher participation rates raise the expected return from an additional child, as well as the expected return from existing daughters. The first effect tends to increase fertility, while the second effect, for relatively concave utility functions, tends to decrease it, so that the distribution of completed fertilities becomes more concentrated.

Keywords

Female labor force participationfertility differentialsson-preferenceuncertainty

JEL classification

J11: Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts J13: Fertility • Family Planning • Child Care • Children • Youth J16: Economics of Gender • Non-labor Discrimination
Type
Research Papers
Information
Journal of Demographic Economics , Volume 85 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 123 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain 2019 

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