Can We Still Learn Something From the Relationship Between Fertility and Mother’s Employment? Evidence From Developing Countries

Abstract

In this work, I study the impact of fertility on mothers' employment for a sample of developing countries. Using the event of multiple births as an instrumental variable (IV) for fertility, I find that having children has a negative impact on female employment. In addition, three types of heterogeneity are found. First, the magnitude of the impact depends on the birth at which the increase in fertility takes place. Second, the types of jobs affected by a fertility shock (multiple births) are jobs identified with a higher degree of informality, such as self-employment or unpaid jobs. Finally, the heterogeneity analysis reveals that an unexpected change in fertility is stronger at a higher education level of the mother and in urban areas.

The Causal Effects of the Number of Children on Female Employment - Do European Institutional and Gender Conditions Matter?

“…There are only a small number of studies that control for endogeneity of family size, and most of those that exist are limited to one country only (Rosenzweig and Wolpin 1980;Angrist and Evans 1998;Jacobsen et al 1999;Vere 2011), or they compare developing countries only (Cruces and Galiani 2007;Cáceres-Delpiano 2012). Notable exceptions are the studies by Del and Del Boca and Sauer (2009), who provided cross-country comparative evidence on the role of institutional arrangements for employment and fertility decisions in western Europe.…”

“…These studies provide evidence for single countries only, which makes it difficult to understand the mediating role of the institutional context for the incompatibility of work and family. Moreover, the variation in the institutional arrangements of these countries is rather limited, as these studies are typically conducted in the U.S. (Rosenzweig and Wolpin 1980;Angrist and Evans 1998;Jacobsen et al 1999) or in developing countries (Cruces and Galiani 2007;Vere 2011;Cáceres-Delpiano 2012). There is almost no evidence for European countries on the causal effects of family size on women's employment.…”

“…First, we take an instrumental variable approach using information on multiple births to compute the causal effects of family size on women's employment. This approach was proposed in the seminal paper by Rosenzweig and Wolpin (1980), and has been applied in a number of recent empirical studies (Cruces and Galiani 2007;Vere 2011;Cáceres-Delpiano 2012). In addition, we use the approach recently proposed by Lewbel (2012) to assess the robustness of our results with respect to the type of instrumental variable.…”

Trends in overweight among women differ by occupational class: results from 33 low- and middle-income countries in the period 1992–2009

“…During the second half of the 20 th century, female labour force participation rates in many low- and middle-income countries rose sharply, while fertility rates dropped dramatically 12, 13 . On average, it is estimated that approximately 50% of women in low- and middle-income countries are currently in the labour force 14 .…”

Birth and Employment Transitions of Women in Turkey: Conflicting or Compatible Roles?

“…In his multi-country analysis, Caceres-Delpiano (2012) claims that fertility affected employment among women negatively in developing countries in the 1990s and 2000s. Studies of developing countries look predominantly at Latin America, 1 and a review of this literature has provided different conclusions.…”