Fertility trends in Europe after 1970 are routinely referred to in terms of the postponement of fertility. The shortening of the effective reproductive lifespan and its association with post-materialist values have raised questions as to whether fertility can or will be recuperated. Decomposition of cohort fertility in Belgium by level of education shows that the postponement of fertility after 1970 is closely related to the expansion of education: compared with cohorts born in [1946][1947][1948][1949][1950] 40 to 50 per cent of the difference in cumulated fertility at age 25 in the 1951-1975 birth cohorts is attributable to rising educational levels. Educational differentials also prove relevant with regard to the recuperation of fertility at older ages as the tempo and quantum of order-specific fertility have responded differently to variations in the economic and policy context, depending on the educational level considered. Differential fertility trends by level of education have thus attenuated the relationship between female educational attainment and completed fertility in recent cohorts.

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Over the last decades the majority of European countries have witnessed fertility levels considerably below replacement. Particularly completed cohort fertility below two children per woman has raised concerns whether this trend corresponds to a decline of fertility intentions or represents a discrepancy between intended and realised fertility. Using data from the Fertility and Family Survey (FFS) conducted in 1991, we look at fertility intentions of women aged 20-39 in Flanders, documenting how intentions differ in terms of education of women and their partners, activity status and household position. For a larger group of women, we subsequently compare the effects of these characteristics on first-, second-and third-birth hazards in a prospective study based on longitudinal microdata from the 1991 and 2001 Belgian censuses. Our results indicate that lifetime fertility intentions in 1991 were above the replacement level, but also that the proportion of women having a child in the three-year period following the 1991 census is lower than the short-term intentions suggested in the FFS, particularly for first births. We find evidence of a positive educational gradient in both fertility intentions and birth hazards. For the highly educated, higher birth hazards are associated with a stronger attachment to the labour market (both before and after parenthood), homogamy to highly educated partners and more frequent uptake of (in)formal child care.

Gender penalties in pension outcomes are widely acknowledged and have been documented for majority populations in various settings. A recurring finding is that the gendered impact of family formation on work–care trajectories adversely affects women's accumulation of pension rights over the lifecourse relative to men. Although maternal employment is particularly low in migrant populations, few papers have explicitly addressed pension protection of migrant women. Using longitudinal microdata from the Belgian Social Security Registers, we analyse whether entry into parenthood differentially affected the build-up of first pillar pension rights of working-age migrant women compared to natives between 1998 and 2010, further distinguishing by origin group and migrant generation. The results show that native women are most likely to build up pension rights through full-time employment both before and after parenthood. In contrast, first-generation women and women of Turkish and Moroccan origin are more likely to build up pension rights though assimilated periods or rely on derived pension rights after parenthood, even when controlling for type of pension build-up before parenthood. We conclude that policies reinforcing individualisation of pension rights based on employment or decreasing the importance of derived rights may erode pension protection of groups having limited access to the labour market, and require co-ordination with employment and family policies that support the combination of work and care responsibilities.

Despite the rise in maternal employment in Europe between 1970 and the 2000s, women's labour market positions continue to depend much more strongly on family formation compared to men's and social policy research highlights the importance of female employment in the prevention of social risks. The available literature on educational gradients in maternal employment is largely based on crosssectional comparisons. This study is among the first to decompose educational differences in maternal employment into differences prior to motherhood and differential effects of childbearing on employment. Drawing on longitudinal microdata (Generations and Gender Survey) for France, the Netherlands, and Hungary, participation in the labour force is studied using mixed effects logit models. In addition we distinguish part-time and full-time work. In line with available literature, clear positive educational gradients in maternal employment are found. These educational gradients largely reflect positive educational differentials already existing before the onset of family formation. This finding is related to the fact that highly educated women typically aim to establish a career before starting a family, but also witness greater labour market opportunities in general. This study finds stronger temporary drops in labour force participation among high educated women which can be explained by higher uptake of leave schemes in these groups. Decomposing part-time maternal employment indicates that educational differences are much less strongly determined by differences before motherhood as the strongest positive educational gradients appear after the birth of a second child.