The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review

Abstract

Low fertility is set to worsen economic problems in many developed countries, and maternity, paternity, and parental leave have emerged as key pro-natal policies. Gender inequity in the balance of domestic and formal work has been identified as a key driver of low fertility, and leave can potentially equalise this balance and thereby promote fertility. However, the literature contends that evidence for the effect of leave on fertility is mixed. We conduct the first systematic review on this topic. By applying a rigorous search protocol, we identify and review empirical studies that quantify the impact of leave policies on fertility. We focus on experimental or quasi-experimental studies that can identify causal effects. We identify 11 papers published between 2009 and 2019, evaluating 23 policy changes across Europe and North America from 1977 to 2009. Results are a mixture of positive, negative, and null impacts on fertility. To explain these apparent inconsistencies, we extend the conceptual framework of Lalive and Zweimüller (2009), which decomposes the total effect of leave on fertility into the “current-child” and “future-child” effects. We decompose these into effects on women at different birth orders, and specify types of study design to identify each effect. We classify the 23 studies in terms of the type of effect identified, revealing that all the negative or null studies identify the current-child effect, and all the positive studies identify the future-child or total effect. Since the future-child and total effects are more important for promoting aggregate fertility, our findings show that leave does in fact increase fertility when benefit increases are generous. Furthermore, our extensions to Lalive and Zweimüller’s conceptual framework provide a more sophisticated way of understanding and classifying the effects of pro-natal policies on fertility. Additionally, we propose ways to adapt the ROBINS-I tool for evaluating risk of bias in pro-natal policy studies.

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

“…Fertility rates do not react to larger leave entitlements. Our suggested results reconcile with the heterogeneous effect of father leave benefits on fertility depending on birth order argued in Sweden (Duvander et al, 2020;Thomas et al, 2022).…”

“…Women with three or more children account for 6.15% of women in the age range 25-39; the intention to have a child among them is around 4% in the following three years ( (INE, 2018). Lastly, the disentangling of the effect on birth order may shed light on the different processes by which individuals choose to have a child (Thomas et al, 2022). It could help to identify household profiles linked to each birth order whose probability of change because of the policy is likely to be potentially different.…”

“…Parental leave benefits can be gender-neutral in some countries, entitle both parents to the same duration, pay level, and transferability, but in others there may be differences (Van Belle, 2016). Furthermore, social norms (Miyajima & Yamaguchi, 2017) and the institutional context (Albanesi et al, 2022;Thomas et al, 2022), such as pre-existing childcare arrangements, may mediate parental leave effects. Because of this, empirical findings on the parental leave policies and fertility relation are difficult to reconcile.…”

Beyond fertility figures: towards reproductive rights and choices

“…Existing pronatalist policies that provide financial assistance aimed at alleviating the costs of raising children and supporting the balance between work and family life play a crucial role in facilitating an individual's childbearing aspirations (McDonald, 2002;Thomas et al, 2022). However, the central issue lies in the discourse surrounding these policies, which often conveys a mandate to have children (Whittaker, 2021).…”

Fertility, employment and family policy

“…Because no sufficient data on average years of schooling is available for the analysis period, Iceland is excluded from the regressions. GDP per capita (expressed in log terms as well as squared log terms, following Thévenon and Luci (2013 [19]) to control for potential nonlinearity in the association between economic output and fertility) from the OECD National Accounts is included to account for economic fluctuations that may affect fertility outcomes. There are a number of other labour market factors that may affect childbearing, that are not covered in the present analysis (e.g., lack of sufficient data, overfitting and/or potential multicollinearity).…”