Child‐Care Availability and Fertility in Norway

Abstract

The child-care and fertility hypothesis has been in the literature for a long time and is straightforward: As child care becomes more available, affordable, and acceptable, the antinatalist effects of increased female educational attainment and work opportunities decrease. As an increasing number of countries express concern about low fertility, the child-care and fertility hypothesis takes on increased importance. Yet data and statistical limitations have heretofore limited empirical tests of the hypothesis. Using rich longitudinal data and appropriate statistical methodology, We show that increased availability of child care increases completed fertility. Moreover, this positive effect of child-care availability is found at every parity transition. We discuss the generalizability of these results to other settings and their broader importance for understanding variation and trends in low fertility.

Earnings and first birth probability among Norwegian men and women 1995-2010

“…There is evidence that mothers return to work increasingly early after childbirth towards the end of the period of study -indicating that the human capital loss caused by the birth of a child decreases over time (Rønsen and Kitterød 2014). One plausible explanation for the increase in mothers' labour supply is the massive expansion of available publicly subsidized childcare in the period of study, a development also shown to increase fertility among women whose opportunity costs of childbearing are high (Rindfuss et al 2010). In sum, these developments lower the opportunity cost of childbearing, which may induce some high-earning women who would otherwise have remained childless, to have a first child, making the correlation between women's earnings and chance of first birth more positive.…”

Grandparenting and Childbearing in the Extended Family

“…However, Rindfuss et al (2007) using Norwegian data, suggest these results are driven by endogeneity, in the sense that women with strong preferences for children may move to municipalities where childcare coverage is high. Using a fixed effect strategy, they show that high coverage indeed leads to earlier childbearing and that the number of children born is also higher (Rindfuss et al, 2010). Bonoli (2008) takes a similar approach, exploiting variation in family policies across 26 Swiss cantons and their fertility rates.…”

“…Our analysis relates to the literature that considers the impact of availability of formal childcare on fertility (Lehrer and Kawasaki, 1985;Del Boca, 2002;Andersson et al, 2004;Rindfuss et al, 2007;Rindfuss et al, 2010), but the issue of grandparenting differs in important ways. Among siblings, this resource is shared and characterized by family specific constraints for which the adult children may compete.…”

A reassessment of the effects of female education and employment on fertility in Nigeria

“…The critical question is whether education is still inversely related to fertility in Nigeria. This question is an important one in view of the recent findings reported for developed countries indicating that education is no longer a significant determinant of fertility; that if alternative childcare is both available and is affordable, the typical expected inverse relationship between female education and fertility is likely to be obliterated (Musick et al 2009;Van Bavel and Rozanska-Putek 2010;Rindfuss et al 2010). So what is the situation in Nigeria?…”