Rindfuss and Brauner-Otto 2008
Introduction
- Low fertility levels
- Should we introduce explicit policies to increase fertility?
- Timing changes: major component of the low levels of period fertility in countries
- Women have children older: decreases TFR
Institutions and policies
- Institutions: set of norms or rules, formal or informal, which guide relationships among role occupants in areas of structured social interactions and organizations
- Policies: formal norms or rules within institutions, and exist until formally changed
- Appropriate macro units for studying institutions: multi-country units + sub-national units
The importance of timing
- Timing changes: strongly influence cohort size
- Feedback loop though the low-fertility trap hypothesis: postponement of fertility produces small cohorts and children from these small cohorts may grow up knowing many adults who had only 1 child or no children
- Timing and number issues are positively correlated: later means fewer
Childrearing not childbearing
- Childrearing: generates incompatibility with other roles
- Increase in the time mothers spend caring for their children - active care
- Supervisory child care: mother has the responsibility of ensuring the appropriate supervision is in place
- Reducing parental supervisory time
- Child care centres
- Affordable and high quality centres
- Help from family members
- Shift work
- Availability of part-time jobs
- Convenient school hours
The transition to adulthood
- Social norms: play a role in the sequencing of events
Education
- Education occupies more young adult years of men and women
- Increase in educational enrollment
- Led to women’s preferences for establishing themselves in the labour market prior to becoming mothers
- Spread of education: women postpone childbearing
- Starting schooling at a younger age: earlier start of childbearing
Education: re-entry
- Important factor: extent to which it is possible to return to school once one has left for a period of time
- Openness of the educational system
School-to-work transition
- More vocationally-specific education systems may lead to earlier childbearing
- It can also lead to a mismatch between labour supply and demand, leading to under-employment
- Long search times for employment lead to delayed childbearing
Work: re-entry
- Important factors: maternity leaves, policies, openness of the labour market
- Family leaves: delay entering parenthood
- Mothers suffer a substantial penalty when they return to the labour market
- Uncertainty to find a job after childrearing: women postpone childbearing
Jobs versus careers
- Higher level of education: more chances to want a career as opposed to having a job
- Availability of part-time jobs: ease mother’s re-entry into the labour market
- These are not career-type jobs
Housing
- Inability to obtain appropriate living quarters likely postpones childbearing
- Independent household = necessary pre-condition for having children
- Couples in single-family homes have faster entry into parenthood than those in apartments or other housing types