Objective This study examines whether the impact of husbands' involvement in childcare and housework on wives' fertility intentions varies by wives' education in Taiwan. Background Recent research has pointed to the positive influence of a more egalitarian division of labor on wives' fertility intentions, yet existing literature often fails to examine educational variations in such linkages. Method This paper analyzed reports of time spent on domestic work (i.e., housework and childcare) for both spouses in the 2016 Women's Marriage, Fertility, and Employment Survey. The analytical sample included all married respondents with at least one child. Regression models and counterfactual analyses were adopted. Results The findings showed that husbands of tertiary‐educated wives shared more housework and childcare. Furthermore, wives' fertility intentions beyond parity‐one increased with more input from husbands in helping with childcare, but not housework sharing. This positive childcare‐sharing effect was particularly salient among tertiary‐educated wives—who tended to be more economically empowered and to have higher expectations for gender equality at home. Finally, counterfactual analyses using a propensity score matching method indicated that non‐tertiary‐educated wives would not increase their fertility intentions even if they had received more help from husbands. Conclusion Such educational variations have been little explored in past theory and research. Pro‐natalist policies aiming to boost fertility will likely attain optimal effectiveness if different combinations of parental‐leave and financial aid packages are offered to women with varying education. This study also contributes to the limited research on how division of labor affects fertility intentions in East Asia.

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The evolution theory of ageing predicts that reproduction comes with long-term costs of survival. However, empirical studies in human species report mixed findings of the relationship between fertility and longevity, which varies by populations, time periods, and individual characteristics. One explanation underscores that changes in survival conditions over historical periods can moderate the negative effect of human fertility on longevity. This study investigates the fertility-longevity relationship in Europe during a period of rapid modernisation (seventeenth to twentieth centuries) and emphasises the dynamics across generations. Using a crowdsourced genealogy dataset from the FamiLinx project, our sample consists of 81,924 women and 103,642 men born between 1601 and 1910 across 16 European countries. Results from multilevel analyses show that higher fertility has a significantly negative effect on longevity. For both women and men, the negative effects are stronger among the older cohorts and have reduced over time. Moreover, we find similar trends in the dynamic associations between fertility and longevity across four geographical regions in Europe. Findings and limitations of this study call for further investigations into the historical dynamics of multiple mechanisms behind the human evolution of ageing.

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Why women in some countries are more likely than others to postpone childbirth when facing employment instability? This study uses 2010–2019 EU-SILC panel data to explore whether the impacts of women’s employment instability, including being unemployed or temporarily employed by fixed-term contracts, on the first- and second-birth transitions differ across 27 European countries and how governments’ provisions of different family policies moderate such relationships. Results showed that while unemployment and temporary employment could generally delay women’s first- and second-birth transition, such effects varied across European countries and depended on the levels of family policy provisions. Countries with more generous family cash benefits were associated with less negative and even positive effects of women’s employment instability on birth transitions. On the other hand, the birth effects of women’s employment instability did not vary significantly across countries according to the length of paid maternity/parental leaves. Most strikingly, countries with higher childcare coverage rates were associated with more negative effects of women’s employment instability on birth transitions. These findings highlight the importance of family policy contexts in shaping women’s childbirth responses to unstable employment circumstances.