Optimal age at motherhood. Theoretical and empirical considerations on postponement of maternity in Europe

Gustafsson, Siv

doi:10.1007/s001480000051

Cited by 241 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 22 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Fertility timing decisions may also aim to minimize the negative effect of childbearing on earnings both in the short and the long term (Gustavsson 2001). Shortterm effects of childbearing on earnings are driven by the fact that (at least one of the) parents usually withdraws from the labour market for a short period to care for infants (and to some extent for toddlers).…”

Section: A Rational Choice Perspective On Couples' Fertility Choicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One possible explanation is that motherhood implies a long-term wage growth penalty -a penalty that would be smallest relatively late in the career when the wage would not increase much anyway (Gustavsson 2001). Another explanation is that uninterrupted career investments up to a given point of time give long-term rewards (Buckles 2008:404). a foothold is established in the labour market, which may in turn reduce the long-term wage penalty of childbearing.…”

Section: A Rational Choice Perspective On Couples' Fertility Choicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Earnings and first birth probability among Norwegian men and women 1995-2010

Hart¹

2015

DemRes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BACKGROUNDThe relationship between earnings and fertility and how it varies with context are among the core investigations of demography. Cross-country comparisons show that when parenting and employment are in conflict, this relationship is less positive for women. We lack knowledge of how this relationship is shaped by context for men and how it varies with contextual changes over time rather than between countries. OBJECTIVE I investigate how the relationship between earnings and first-birth probability changes over time for men and women, in a period when efforts in parenting and paid work become increasingly similar across sex. METHODSDiscrete-time hazard regressions are applied to highly accurate data from Norwegian population registers. Through estimation of separate models for each of the years 1995 through 2010, I assess whether the correlation between yearly earnings and the first birth probabilities changed over period time. The correlation is estimated net of observable confounders, such as educational enrolment and attainment and region of birth. RESULTSThe correlation between earnings and fertility has become substantially more positive over time for women, and also somewhat more positive among men. CONCLUSIONSThough the potential opportunity cost of fathering increases, there is no evidence of a weaker correlation between earnings and first birth probability for men. I suggest that decreasing opportunity costs of motherhood as well as strategic timing of fertility are both plausible explanations for the increasingly positive correlation among women.

show abstract

Section: A Rational Choice Perspective On Couples' Fertility Choicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Rational Choice Perspective On Couples' Fertility Choicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Earnings and first birth probability among Norwegian men and women 1995-2010

Hart¹

2015

DemRes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Theoretically, the conventional explanation is that the negative price effects of children (i.e. the opportunity costs of childbearing) outweigh the positive income effects of education on fertility for women (but not for men) (Kravdal 1994;Gustafsson 2001;Joshi 2002;Kravdal and Rindfuss 2008) -although more recent evidence about contemporary dual-career, high income couples in Sweden indicates that this does not always need to be the case (Dribe and Stanfors 2010;Tesching 2012).…”

Section: The Expansion Of Female Education and Reproductive Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 99%

The mid-twentieth century Baby Boom and the changing educational gradient in Belgian cohort fertility

Bavel¹

2014

DemRes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…The standard economic theory of the timing of births, also known as the life-cycle model, relies on three assumptions: individuals maximize their well-being over the lifecycle; human capital and thereby wages increase with experience at a decreasing rate; and human capital depreciates while being out of the labor force (Mincer and Polachek 1974;Happel, Hill, and Low 1984;Montgomery and Trussel 1986;Gustafsson 2001). The last assumption implies that the annual wages of mothers should be lower than that of childless women.…”

Section: Spacing Of Births: An Economic Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%