One of the major explanations brought forward for the emergence if low fertility in Italy (and other Mediterranean countries) has been increased education and labour force participation among women. The argument relies on the fact that higher education and earnings increase women's opportunity cost, which in turn delay the onset of childbearing and therefore reduce completed fertility. In this paper we consider the role of women's socio-economic status on delaying motherhood and fertility. Using two different data sets, one to infer socio-economic status, the other to estimate models of first, second and third births, we show that women's socio-economic status indeed delays the onset of motherhood, but also that there are strong recuperation effects which works through first and second births. Socio-economic status has little effect on third births however. The paper demonstrates how such delay and recuperation effects can be estimated through a multi-spell hazard rate model. We also perform extensive sensitivity analysis, and show that controlling for unobserved heterogeneity is important but that the assumption imposed on its distribution function is of minor importance.
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Paper provided by Institute for Social and Economic Research in its series ISER working papers with number
2006-46.
Length: 26 Date of creation: 21 Sep 2006 Date of revision: Publication status: published Handle: RePEc:ese:iserwp:2006-46
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