Does Maternity Leave Induce Births?

Abstract

Alleviating the tension between the conflicting responsibilities women may face as mothers and as workers is a topic of current policy interest. Expansion of guaranteed maternity leave to all employed women in the United States is suggested as one possible “family‐friendly” solution. Controversy surrounding the issue of increased maternity leave centers around the potential cost to firms of widespread access to leave. One specific concern is that the availability of maternity leave will actually increase births among eligible working women. In this paper we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine the impact of maternity leave on fertility. We explore two possible routes through which maternity leave may influence fertility. We first estimate the impact of desired fertility on the probability of being in a job offering maternity leave. We then estimate the impact of maternity leave and desired fertility on the probability of a birth. We find no evidence that women sort by fertility desires into firms on the basis of their maternity leave policy. We do find that the probability of a birth increases as a result of maternity leave, and that the fertility effect of maternity leave increases with birth parity.

Impact of parental leave system on the childbirth plan among working married women: a three-year follow-up study of the Korean longitudinal survey of women and families

“…Parental leave beneficiaries were 3.63 times more likely to consider planning childbirth, which is consistent with the findings of previous studies that reported a positive relationship between family policy and parturition [ 22 , 23 ]. It has been confirmed that the parental leave system positively affects women’s view of marriage [ 24 ] and maternal health [ 25 ].…”

More father leave, more babies? Father-exclusive parental leave periods and fertility

“…Some studies link paid and job-protected maternity benefits with positive effects on fertility, such as in Austria (Lalive & Zweimüller, 2009) and Germany (Raute, 2019). In contrast, paid maternity leave did little to encourage fertility in Norway (Dahl et al, 2016) and there is mixed evidence in the case of the US (Averett & Whittington, 2001;Flores et al, 2023;Golightly & Meyerhofer, 2022;Olivetti & Petrongolo, 2017;Pihl & Basso, 2019;Rossin-Slater et al, 2012). See Olivetti and Perengolo (2017) for a full review.…”

Assessing the Fertility Effects of Childcare Cost Subsidies: Evidence from the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit

“…The provision of maternity leave has also received attention for its potential fertility effects as it can lower the cost of childbearing when leave is available. Early research demonstrated a link between maternity leave and fertility (Averett and Whittington, 2001). More recent work has used the adoption of the Family and Medical Leave Act in the US in 1993 to identify the effect of leave on fertility and has found positive effects (Cannioner, 2014).…”