Volume 46 - Article 35 | Pages 1037–1064  

Unemployment and fertility: The relationship between individual and aggregated unemployment and fertility during 1994–2014 in Norway

By Axel Peter Kristensen, Trude Lappegård

Abstract

Background: Studies on the unemployment–fertility relationship show divergent and inconclusive findings.

Objective: We aim to investigate the unemployment–fertility relationship by focusing on multiple dimensions of unemployment across 21 years.

Methods: Using register data covering the Norwegian population in the period 1994–2014, we apply discrete-time event history analysis to estimate the relative risk of first and higher-order births for men and women by their employment situation and local unemployment levels.

Results: There is a negative association between individual unemployment and the risk of birth for childless women, childless men, and fathers. For mothers, the association is positive. The negative association is present among childless men and childless women across the included time period of the study, whereas for mothers and fathers it disappeared over time. There is a negative association between municipal unemployment rates and higher-order births, but not first births. A positive association was found in the 1990s for childless men and childless women, but at the turn of the millennium the association became slightly negative. For mothers and fathers, the negative association remains over time but grows weaker and less clear. Our findings also show that individual unemployment matters more for people’s fertility behavior than aggregated unemployment and that it matters more for childless individuals’ childbearing decisions than for parents’.

Contribution: By investigating the unemployment–fertility relationship using different unemployment measures and a gender perspective, this paper extends our understanding of contemporary fertility dynamics while also checking for potential changes in this relationship across time.

Author's Affiliation

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Parental leave policies and continued childbearing in Iceland, Norway, and Sweden
Volume 40 - Article 51

Can a cash transfer to families change fertility behaviour?
Volume 38 - Article 33

Introduction to the Special Collection on Finding Work-Life Balance: History, Determinants, and Consequences of New Bread-Winning Models in the Industrialized World
Volume 37 - Article 26

The link between parenthood and partnership in contemporary Norway - Findings from focus group research
Volume 32 - Article 9

Towards a new understanding of cohabitation: Insights from focus group research across Europe and Australia
Volume 31 - Article 34

Cohort fertility patterns in the Nordic countries
Volume 20 - Article 14

New fertility trends in Norway
Volume 2 - Article 3

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

The short- and long-term determinants of fertility in Uruguay
Volume 51 - Article 10    | Keywords: fertility, panel data, stages of female reproductive life, time series, Uruguay

The big decline: Lowest-low fertility in Uruguay (2016–2021)
Volume 50 - Article 16    | Keywords: adolescent fertility, birth order, fertility, Latin America, ultra-low fertility, Uruguay

Cohort fertility of immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union
Volume 50 - Article 13    | Keywords: age at first birth, assimilation, cohort analysis, fertility, immigration, parity, religiosity

Fertility decline, changes in age structure, and the potential for demographic dividends: A global analysis
Volume 50 - Article 9    | Keywords: age structure, demographic dividend, demographic transition, fertility, migration, population momentum, working-age population

Analyzing hyperstable population models
Volume 49 - Article 37    | Keywords: birth trajectory, cohort analysis, cyclical populations, dynamic population model, fertility, hyperstable, period