IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/labeco/v97y2025ics0927537125001113.html

The impact of flexibility at work on fertility

Author

Listed:
  • Bratsberg, Bernt
  • Walther, Selma

Abstract

Leveraging the first Covid-19 lockdown in Norway as a laboratory for an increase in work flexibility, we uncover a significant and persistent 10% increase in births. Using the Goldin (2014) measure of work flexibility based on occupation characteristics, we show that fertility increases were concentrated among women in “greedy jobs” with lower flexibility prior to lockdown. We formalize this intuition in a theoretical model where a rise in flexibility increases a woman’s time budget and boosts the fertility of higher earning women. The increase in work flexibility under Covid-19 lockdown allowed high-earning women in inflexible jobs to alleviate the career-family trade-off.

Suggested Citation

  • Bratsberg, Bernt & Walther, Selma, 2025. "The impact of flexibility at work on fertility," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:97:y:2025:i:c:s0927537125001113
    DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102787
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537125001113
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102787?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:97:y:2025:i:c:s0927537125001113. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/labeco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.