Women's paid work and the timing of births

Bhrolcháin, Máire Ní

doi:10.1007/bf01796880

Cited by 39 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…An alternative explanation for the same pattern relates to work accelerated childbearing. As suggested by Ní Brolcháin (1986a;1986b) in order to minimise both missed earnings and the risks of a depreciation of human capital, it might be rational for career-oriented women to space their births close together. Whatever the mechanism, in the event history models the described effect could be detected as a reduction in the strength of the effect of educational attainment on birth intensities that follows the inclusion of the age at first birth among the covariates.…”

Section: Other Covariatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of education on second births before and after societal transition: Evidence from the Estonian GGS

Klesment¹,

Puur²

2010

DemRes

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Section: Other Covariatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of education on second births before and after societal transition: Evidence from the Estonian GGS

Klesment¹,

Puur²

2010

DemRes

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“…Especially highly educated women may be expected to do so because they encounter higher opportunity costs of childrearing. One assumption is that they try to space their births closely together to return to work as soon as possible and reduce the costs they have while they are out of employment (Kreyenfeld, 2002b;Ní Bhrolcháin, 1986). This means that they have their second child earlier than other women do, and this increases the second birth risk and indicates the existence of a timing effect.…”

Section: Theoretical Considerations and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Second births in western Germany and France

Köppen¹

2006

DemRes

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We compare second birth risks in France and western Germany using data from the Family and Fertility Survey. Second birth risks are higher for highly educated women than for women with lower education in both countries. In western Germany, the positive effect weakens after controlling for the education level of the partner. The positive effect of French women's education remains unchanged, even after controlling for the partners' characteristics. We interpret this finding in the sense that work and family life are more compatible in France, where highly educated women can turn their education more often into work opportunities and income. West German women often have to make a decision between an employment career and motherhood as two exclusive life options. In such a situation, it is primarily the partners' earning potential that influences fertility.

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“…There are several reasons given in the literature for this close spacing of first and second children. Ní Bhrolcháin (1986) argues that close spacing of births is an efficient way of organizing the fertility career because it minimizes fertility-related employment interruptions. Others refer to the "sibling hypothesis" to explain a rapid progression to the second child (Griffith, Koo, and Suchindran 1985;Henz 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social policies, separation, and second birth spacing in Western Europe

Kreyenfeld

Geisler

Castro-Martín

et al. 2017

DemRes

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This paper studies postseparation fertility behavior. The aim is to investigate whether, and if so how, separation affects second birth spacing in Western European countries.\ud This analysis makes use of rich survey data from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, as well as from Finnish register data. We thus cover the behavior of a large proportion of the population of Western Europe. We also use descriptive measures, such as Kaplan‒Meier survival functions and cumulative incidence curves. In the multivariate analysis, we employ event history modeling to show how education relates to postseparation fertility behavior. There are large differences in postseparation fertility behavior across European countries. For Spain and Italy, we find that only a negligibly small proportion of the population have a second child after separating from the other parent of the firstborn child. The countries with the highest proportion of second children with a new partner are the United Kingdom, Germany, and Finland. In all countries, separation after first birth leads to a sharp increase in the birth interval between first and second births. \ud Our study is a contribution to the demographic literature that aims at understanding birth spacing patterns in Western Europe. Furthermore, we draw attention to the role of postseparation policies in explaining country differences in fertility behavior in contemporary societies

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Women's paid work and the timing of births

Cited by 39 publications

References 22 publications

Effects of education on second births before and after societal transition: Evidence from the Estonian GGS

Effects of education on second births before and after societal transition: Evidence from the Estonian GGS

Second births in western Germany and France

Social policies, separation, and second birth spacing in Western Europe

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