Female labor market transitions and the timing of births: A simultaneous analysis of the effects of schooling

Hans Bloemen; Adriaan S. Kalwij

doi:10.1016/S0927-5371(01)00043-4

Female labor market transitions and the timing of births: A simultaneous analysis of the effects of schooling

Hans Bloemen^*
, Adriaan S. Kalwij

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

This paper develops a simultaneous analysis of the timing of births and labor market transitions of women in the Netherlands. The results show that an increase in the years of schooling of a woman causes her to schedule births later in life but it does not significantly affect her completed fertility. Moreover, the effects of an increase in schooling on the timing of births mainly have an impact through changes in female employment status: a more highly educated woman is more likely to move into employment and, consequently, to delay births. We show that ignoring the endogeneity of fertility results in an underestimation of the effects of schooling on lifecycle female employment. Unobserved heterogeneity, interpreted as preferences over work and children, turns out to be of major empirical importance. Women with a higher preference of work over children have significantly higher employment rates at all ages, delay births and have a significant lower level of completed fertility.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	593-620
Number of pages	28
Journal	Labour Economics
Volume	8
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/S0927-5371(01)00043-4
Publication status	Published - 1 Dec 2001
Externally published	Yes

Funding

We wish to thank Richard Blundell, Rob Euwals, Mary Gregory, Siv Gustafsson, Guido Imbens, Arie Kapteyn, Tony Lancaster, John Rust, Arthur van Soest, James Walker and the two anonymous referees for the valuable comments. We gratefully acknowledge the hospitality of the Department of Economics at University College London where part of the work has been done. We wish to thank the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for the financial support and making the SSCW data available to us. The data is available solely for the purpose of replication. An earlier version of this paper appeared as CentER discussion paper, no.9626, Tilburg University, under the title “Female Employment and the Timing of Births Decisions: a Multiple State Transition Model”.

Keywords

C41
Duration analysis
Female employment
Fertility
J13
J22

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1016/S0927-5371(01)00043-4

Cite this

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title = "Female labor market transitions and the timing of births: A simultaneous analysis of the effects of schooling",

abstract = "This paper develops a simultaneous analysis of the timing of births and labor market transitions of women in the Netherlands. The results show that an increase in the years of schooling of a woman causes her to schedule births later in life but it does not significantly affect her completed fertility. Moreover, the effects of an increase in schooling on the timing of births mainly have an impact through changes in female employment status: a more highly educated woman is more likely to move into employment and, consequently, to delay births. We show that ignoring the endogeneity of fertility results in an underestimation of the effects of schooling on lifecycle female employment. Unobserved heterogeneity, interpreted as preferences over work and children, turns out to be of major empirical importance. Women with a higher preference of work over children have significantly higher employment rates at all ages, delay births and have a significant lower level of completed fertility.",

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AB - This paper develops a simultaneous analysis of the timing of births and labor market transitions of women in the Netherlands. The results show that an increase in the years of schooling of a woman causes her to schedule births later in life but it does not significantly affect her completed fertility. Moreover, the effects of an increase in schooling on the timing of births mainly have an impact through changes in female employment status: a more highly educated woman is more likely to move into employment and, consequently, to delay births. We show that ignoring the endogeneity of fertility results in an underestimation of the effects of schooling on lifecycle female employment. Unobserved heterogeneity, interpreted as preferences over work and children, turns out to be of major empirical importance. Women with a higher preference of work over children have significantly higher employment rates at all ages, delay births and have a significant lower level of completed fertility.

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KW - J22

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Female labor market transitions and the timing of births: A simultaneous analysis of the effects of schooling

Abstract

Funding

Keywords

UN SDGs

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