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Will the Stork Return to Europe and Japan? Understanding Fertility Within Developed Nations

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Bruce Sacerdote
James Feyrer

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Abstract

Only a few rich nations are currently at replacement levels of fertility and many are considerably below. We believe that changes in the status of women are driving fertility change. At low levels of female status, women specialize in household production and fertility is high. In an intermediate phase, women have increasing opportunities to earn a living outside the home yet still shoulder the bulk of household production. Fertility is at a minimum in this regime due to the increased opportunity cost in women's foregone wages with no decrease in time allocated to childcare. We see the lowest fertility nations (Japan, Spain, Italy) as being in this regime. At even higher levels of women's status, men begin to share in the burden of child care at home and fertility is higher than in the middle regime. This progression has been observed in the US, Sweden and other countries. Using ISSP and World Values Survey data we show that countries in which men perform relatively more of the childcare and household production (and where female labor force participation was highest 30 years ago) have the highest fertility within the rich country sample. Fertility and women's labor force participation have become positively correlated across high income countries. The trend in men's household work suggests that the low fertility countries may see increases in fertility as women's household status catches up to their workforce opportunities. We also note that as the poor nations of the world undergo the demographic transition they appear to be reducing fertility faster and further than the current rich countries did at similar levels of income. By examining fertility differences between the rich nations we may be able to gain insight into where the world is headed.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 14114.

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Date of creation: Jun 2008
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14114

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
I0 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - General
J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

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References listed on IDEAS
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Setsuya Fukuda, 2009. "Shifting economic foundation of marriage in Japan: the erosion of traditional marriage," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2009-033, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  2. Masako Kimura & Daishin Yasui, 2008. "Public Provision of Private Child Goods," KIER Working Papers 662, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
  3. Zamac, Jovan & Hallberg, Daniel & Lindh, Thomas, 2008. "Low fertility and long run growth in an economy with a large public sector," CAFO Working Papers 2009:5, Centre for Labour Market Policy Research (CAFO), School of Management and Economics, Växjö University. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Luca Stanca, 2009. "Suffer the Little Children: Measuring the Effects of Parenthood on Well-Being Worldwide," Working Papers 173, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Oct 2009. [Downloadable!]
  5. David E. Bloom & David Canning & Günther Fink & Jocelyn E. Finlay, 2008. "The High Cost of Low Fertility in Europe," PGDA Working Papers 3208, Program on the Global Demography of Aging. [Downloadable!]
  6. David E. Bloom & David Canning & Günther Fink & Jocelyn E. Finlay, 2009. "The Cost of Low Fertility in Europe," NBER Working Papers 14820, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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