No abstract

During the 2010s, fertility rates fell across the Nordic region. The onset of thesedeclines seems linked to the Great Recession of 2008–2009 but their continuation cannot easilybe linked to subsequent economic change. The 1990s, too, brought episodes of economic crisesto the Nordic region that were followed by different degrees of fertility decline. In this study,we provide an empirical overview of parity-, age- and education-specific fertility developmentsin the five Nordic countries in the wake of the economic recessions in 2008 and the early 1990s,respectively. We demonstrate a high degree of heterogeneity in fertility developments acrosscountries after 1990, whereas after 2008, the trends are much more similar across the fivecountries. Likewise, the educational differences in birth hazards that characterized thedevelopments after 1990 were much smaller in the initial years after 2008–2009. This reversalfrom heterogeneity to homogeneity in the fertility response to recessions calls for an expansionof theories on the cyclicality of fertility in relation to uncertainty and economic and socialchange. In our discussion, we consider the role of a set of factors that also incorporates the state,crisis management, and perceptions of economic and welfare uncertainty.

During the 2010s, fertility rates fell across the Nordic region. The onset of these declines seems linked to the Great Recession of 2008–2009, but their continuation cannot easily be linked to subsequent economic change. The 1990s, too, brought episodes of economic crises to the Nordic region that were followed by different degrees of fertility decline. In this study, we provide an empirical overview of parity-, age- and education-specific fertility developments in the five Nordic countries in the wake of the economic recessions in 2008 and the early 1990s, respectively. We demonstrate a high degree of heterogeneity in fertility developments across countries after 1990, whereas after 2008, the trends are much more similar across the five countries. Likewise, the educational differences in birth hazards that characterized the developments after 1990 were much smaller in the initial years after 2008–2009. This reversal from heterogeneity to homogeneity in the fertility response to recessions calls for an expansion of theories on the cyclicality of fertility in relation to uncertainty and economic and social change. In our discussion, we consider the role of a set of factors that also incorporates the state, crisis management, and perceptions of economic and welfare uncertainty.

Informed by the life course perspective, this paper investigates whether and how employment and family trajectories are jointly associated with subjective, relational and financial wellbeing later in life. We draw on data from the Swiss Household Panel which combines biographical retrospective information on work, partnership and childbearing trajectories with 19 annual waves containing a number of wellbeing indicators as well as detailed socio-demographic and social origin information. We use sequence analysis to identify the main family and work trajectories for men and women aged 20–50 years old. We use OLS regression models to assess the association between those trajectories and their interdependency with wellbeing. Results reveal a joint association between work and family trajectories and wellbeing at older age, even net of social origin and pre-trajectory resources. For women, but not for men, the association is also not fully explained by proximate (current family and work status) determinants of wellbeing. Women’s stable full-time employment combined with traditional family trajectories yields a subjective wellbeing premium, whereas childlessness and absence of a stable partnership over the life course is associated with lower levels of financial and subjective wellbeing after 50 especially in combination with a trajectory of weak labour market involvement. Relational wellbeing is not associated with employment trajectories, and only weakly linked to family trajectories among men.

Many previous studies have documented the procyclicality of fertility to business cycles or labour market indicators in Western countries. However, part of the recent fertility decline witnessed since the Great Recession has been left unexplained by traditional measures. The present study advances the notion that birth postponement might have accelerated in response to rising uncertainty, which fuelled negative expectations and declining levels of confidence about the future. To provide empirical support for the causal effect of perceived uncertainty on birth rates, we focus on Italy’s sovereign debt crisis of 2011–2012 as a natural experiment. Perceived uncertainty is measured using Google trends for the term ‘spread’—which acted as somewhat of a barometer for the crisis both in the media and everyday conversations—to capture the general public’s degree of concern about the stability of Italian public finances. A regression discontinuity in time identifies the effect of perceived uncertainty on birth rates in Italy as a drop between 1.5% and 5%, depending on model specification.