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We estimate a dynamic life cycle model of labor supply, fertility, and savings, incorporating occupational choices, with specific wage paths and skill atrophy that vary over the career. This allows us to understand the trade-off between occupational choice and desired fertility, as well as sorting both into the labor market and across occupations. We quantify the life cycle career costs associated with children, how they decompose into loss of skills during interruptions, lost earnings opportunities, and selection into more child-friendly occupations. We analyze the long-run effects of policies that encourage fertility and show that they are considerably smaller than short-run effects.

What role does affordable and widely available public child care play for fertility? We exploit a major German reform generating large temporal and spatial variation in child care coverage for children under the age of three. Our precise and robust estimates on birth register data reveal that increases in public child care have significant positive effects on fertility. The fertility effects are more pronounced at the intensive than at the extensive margin, and are not driven by changes in the timing of births or selective migration. Our findings inform policy makers concerned about low fertility by suggesting that universal early child care holds the promise of being an effective means of increasing birth rates.

This study explores how social and political factors shape attitudes toward medically assisted reproduction in Hungary, focusing on the selective pronatalist policies that prioritize middle‐class, heteronormative families while marginalizing LGBTQ+ individuals. In a national context where childbearing is framed as a societal expectation and voluntary childlessness is less accepted than in Western and Northern Europe, these policies play a pivotal role in shaping public attitudes. Drawing on data from a 2024 nationwide representative survey, the study examines the influence of sociodemographic variables on public support for medically assisted reproduction, with particular attention to attitudes toward lesbian couples’ access to in‐vitro fertilization. The findings reveal that individuals concerned about population decline and those with strong nationalist sentiments are more likely to support medically assisted reproduction, while those who are more accepting of voluntary childlessness show less support. However, access to medically assisted reproduction for lesbian couples is significantly less supported, particularly among those who endorse traditional gender roles and nationalist ideologies. These results underscore the intersection of pronatalist policies, nationalist narratives, and social exclusion, raising critical questions about reproductive autonomy, inclusivity, and the ethical implications of state‐supported fertility programmes. The study contributes to broader debates on how reproductive policies reflect, reinforce, and actively shape societal norms, particularly in contexts where demographic anxieties and nationalist agendas converge.

Although the association between fertility and education is central to several theories of fertility behaviour and is frequently explored in empirical work, educational differentials in childlessness and cohort parity progression have been scarcely documented and few cross-country comparisons have been made. This article explores educational gradients with respect to entry into parenthood and parity progression for cohorts born between 1940 and 1961 in 14 low-fertility countries. Using longitudinal microdata, discrete-time event history models for repeated events are estimated for first, second, and third births including a random effect at the level of individual women (shared frailty). Subsequently, estimated hazards are used to calculate cohort parity progression ratios by level of education. Educational gradients in fertility differ strongly between countries whereas change over time within countries is limited. In all countries childlessness is more frequent among highly educated women, suggesting that negative effects of opportunity costs outweigh positive income effects. The effect of unequal selection into motherhood across educational groups on educational gradients in higher order births through unobserved time-invariant characteristics is limited. For second births, Central and Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Hungary) show negative educational gradients, whereas the educational gradient is neutral or positive in other countries (Norway, Australia, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy). For third births results show that Central and Eastern European countries more often display negative educational gradients, whereas other European regions and Australia show negative gradients, positive gradients, and U-shaped patterns of association. The strong differences between countries suggest that context plays an important role in shaping educational gradients in childlessness and parity progression.

How do changes in employment uncertainty matter for fertility? Empirical studies on the impact of employment uncertainty on reproductive decisionmaking offer a variety of conclusions, ranging from gender and socio-economic differences in the effect of employment uncertainty on fertility intentions and behaviour, to the effect of employment on changes in fertility intentions. This article analyses the association between a change in subjective employment uncertainty and fertility intentions and behaviour by distinguishing male and female partners' employment uncertainty, and examines the variation in these associations by education. Using a sample of men and women living in a couple from the Swiss Household Panel (SHP 2002-2011), we examine through multinomial analysis how changes in employment uncertainty and selected socio-demographic factors are related to individual childbearing decisions. Our results show strong gendered effects of changes in employment uncertainty on the revision of reproductive decisions among the highly educated population.

This paper assesses the much-disputed relationship between family policy and fertility, and cash transfers and fertility in particular. We take advantage of a cash-for-care (CFC) policy introduced in Norway in 1998, and compare the subsequent fertility behaviour of eligible and ineligible mothers over a four-year period. We estimate linear models assessing both the occurrence and timing of second births, relying on a rich set of covariates and a sensitivity analysis to ensure the robustness of our results. Contrary to theoretical expectations, the results show that CFC-eligible mothers had a slower progression to second births and lower short-term fertility. The patterns differ between different groups of mothers, and the decline in subsequent childbearing is only statistically significant among mothers with upper secondary (but not higher) education and part-time or full-time employment. We find no increase in short-term fertility in any group of mothers, and suggest that this pattern may be driven by an interaction between the CFC benefit and the already established Norwegian parental leave scheme.

Nowhere in Europe is extramarital childbearing more pervasive than in Iceland. Roughly, 70% of children born in 2018 were conceived outside of marriage, thereof 83% of firstborn, which, on the surface, puts Iceland at the vanguard of a development often associated with a second demographic transition. In this study, we investigate the union formation behaviour of Icelandic women during a period of 20 years (1994-2013) with the objectives of gaining insight into the interplay of childbearing, registered cohabitation, and marriage and to enhance our understanding of the function of registered cohabitation in the family-building process. We use administrative population register data, covering the childbearing and marital history of the total female population born in Iceland during 1962-1997. The data are analysed by means of event history techniques and presented as annual indices of first-registered cohabitation and first-marriage formation, respectively. We find indications of forceful postponement of registering cohabitation over time, but a stable portion of around 80% of women registered cohabitation before any first marriage or age 46. Around 70% of women married before age 46, and the standardized marriage rates remained relatively stable during most of our study period. Our findings suggest that within a context such as the Icelandic one, most people tend to marry, regardless of the prevalence of cohabitation. We propose that registered cohabitation should be seen as providing a semi-regulated union status for prospective parents in relation to childbearing. Marriage on the other hand could be seen as providing an elevated union status to couples.

This paper investigates whether unemployment and insecure employment periods merely delay fertility or also impact on completed fertility in France. It analyses both the timing of first childbearing and the fertility reached at age 40. Different indicators of declining employment security are used, i.e., current individual employment characteristics, the accumulation of unstable jobs, and aggregate-level indicators of employment uncertainty. Male unemployment has a negative influence on the timing of first childbearing, while periods of insecure employment delay fertility for women. Completed fertility is impacted by unemployment spells only for men who have faced long-term unemployment. Employment uncertainty thus tends to delay first parenthood but has a relatively weak effect on lifetime fertility in France. Generous state support to families associated with a generous unemployment insurance system, and the strong French two-child family norm, may explain why economic uncertainty affects fertility less than elsewhere.

In most societies, women at age 39 with higher levels of education have fewer children. To understand this association, we investigated the effects of childbearing on educational attainment and the effects of education on fertility in the 1964 birth cohort of Norwegian women. Using detailed annual data from ages 17 to 39, we estimated the probabilities of an additional birth, a change in educational level, and enrollment in the coming year, conditional on fertility history, educational level, and enrollment history at the beginning of each year. A simple model reproduced a declining gradient of children ever born with increasing educational level at age 39. When a counterfactual simulation assumed no effects of childbearing on educational progression or enrollment (without changing the estimated effects of education on childbearing), the simulated number of children ever born decreased very little with increasing completed educational level, contrary to data. However, when another counterfactual simulation assumed no effects of current educational level and enrollment on childbearing (without changing the estimated effects of childbearing on education), the simulated number of children ever born decreased with increasing completed educational level nearly as much as the decrease in the data. In summary, in these Norwegian data, childbearing impeded education much more than education impeded childbearing. These results suggest that women with advanced degrees have lower completed fertility on the average principally because women who have one or more children early are more likely to leave or not enter long educational tracks and never attain a high educational level.

Women have made considerable gains in educational attainment and increased their labour market participation, which has in turn impacted childbearing behaviour. The current study contributes to the growing literature on the impact of educational fields and occupation on fertility. We examine how women's field of study, occupation, and occupational sex segregation shape the transition to first and higher order births. Using data from a repeated cross-sectional survey of the Dutch population (born 1940–1985), we estimate a series of discrete-time complementary log-log models with frailty. We find differences in the transition to first birth by educational field. Compared to women with a degree from educational studies (teaching), women who studied technological, economical, or cultural subjects have a significantly lower transition to first birth. Compared with those in economic and technical jobs, women in communicative jobs (healthcare, teaching) have faster transitions for all births. We also find evidence that occupational sex segregation impacts fertility, with women employed in occupations with a higher proportion of women having a significantly faster transition to first birth. Although women in higher professional and managerial occupations are more likely to postpone first births, they compress the time to motherhood, having additional children significantly faster.