Booms, Busts, and Fertility: Testing the Becker Model Using Gender-Specific Labor Demand

• Autores: Jessamyn Schaller
• Localización: Journal of human resources, ISSN 0022-166X, Vol. 51, Nº 1, 2016, págs. 1-29
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In this paper, I present estimates of the effect of local labor demand shocks on birth rates. To identify exogenous variation in male and female labor demand, I create indices that exploit cross-sectional variation in industry composition, changes in gender-education composition within industries, and growth in national industry employment. Consistent with economic theory, I find that improvements in men’s labor market conditions are associated with increases in fertility while improvements in women’s labor market conditions have smaller negative effects. I separately find that increases in unemployment rates are associated with small decreases in birth rates at the state level.