Gender-specific effects of unemployment on family formation – evidence from a cross-national view

Christian Schmitt, German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), DIW Berlin

We investigate the impact of precarious employment careers on childbirth by focusing on the unemployment cycles of men and women. The theoretical intention of this paper is to combine a rational choice perspective with a life course approach at the micro level, while considering institutional settings and cultural traits at the macro level. The cross-national comparison includes four countries, each representing a different welfare regime. Applying a piecewise-constant exponential hazard model to ECHP microdata, we investigate how the duration of previous unemployment affects subsequent childbirth. Our findings suggest that unemployment has a positive effect for women in Finland, Germany and the UK. For women in France however we find negative effects of unemployment on fertility. For men we find mostly negative effects of unemployment on family formation. These effects however are - except for Finland - mainly caused by negative income effects of unemployment.