Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/161108
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 10485
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper investigates the impact of job displacement on women's first birth rates, and the variation in this effect over the business cycle. We used mass layoffs to estimate the causal effects of involuntary job loss on fertility in the short and medium term, up to five years after displacement. Our analysis is based on rich administrative data from Germany, with an observation period spanning more than 20 years. We apply inverse probability weighting (IPW) to flexibly control for the observed differences between women who were and were not displaced. To account for the differences in the composition of the women who were displaced in a downturn and the women who were displaced in an upswing, a double weighting estimator was employed. We find that the extent to which job displacement had adverse effects on fertility depended on the business cycle. The first birth rates of the women who were displaced in an economic downturn were much lower than the first birth rates of the women who lost a job in an economic upturn. This result cannot be explained by changes in the observed characteristics of the displaced women over the business cycle.
Subjects: 
fertility
job loss
mass layoffs
business cycle
unemployment
JEL: 
J13
J64
J65
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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