Job Instability and Fertility Intentions of Young Adults in Europe: Does Labor Market Legislation Matter?

• Author: Tatiana Karabchuk
• Published date: 01 March 2020
• Date: 01 March 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0002716220910419

ANNALS, AAPSS, 688, March 2020 225

DOI: 10.1177/0002716220910419

Job Instability

and Fertility

Intentions of

Young Adults in

Europe: Does

Labor Market

Legislation

Matter?

By

TATIANA KARABCHUK

910419ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYJOB INSTABILITY AND FERTILITY INTENTIONS

research-article2020

Total birth rates have fallen dramatically in many

European countries during the last 40 years. Job and

income instability caused by labor market polarization

are significant drivers of declining birth rates because

employment certainty and stability are crucial to child-

birth planning among young adults. This article investi-

gates the impact of job instability on the fertility

intentions of young adults in Europe, focusing on

employment protection legislation (EPL) in European

countries. I use data from twenty-seven countries that

participated in the European Social Survey in 2004 and

2010 to show that job instability measured as temporary

employment, informal work, and unemployment

decreases fertility intentions among European youth

regardless of the EPL in the country. Unemployed

young adults tend to plan less for having their first child

in the countries with high EPL. Contrary to the

hypotheses, multilevel modeling showed that young

people in temporary or informal employment in coun-

tries with low EPL show decreases in their fertility

intentions.

Keywords: job instability; fertility intentions; employ-

ment type; employment protection legis-

lation; dual labor markets; Europe

Only a few European countries have experi-

enced fertility growth in the last 20 years,

while others have been facing considerable

decline in birth rates, with fertility falling far

below the replacement level (Feyrer, Sacerdote,

and Stern 2008; Balbo, Billari, and Mills 2013;

Rindfuss and Choe 2015). Between 1970 and

the 1990s, fertility decline was attributed to

increased female participation in higher educa-

tion and the labor force (Becker 1981; Bloom

Tatiana Karabchuk has published more than twenty

peer-reviewed articles, completed twelve research

grants, and has been working at the UAE University in

Al Ain since 2016. Before that, she worked with the

National Research University - Higher School of

Economics in Moscow for 14 years as an associate pro-

fessor and the deputy director of LCSR.

Correspondence: tkarabchuk@uaeu.ac.ae

226 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

and Trussell 1984; Kiernan 1989; Jacobson and Heaton 1991). In the 2000s,

however, we learned that the higher the female employment rate in a country,

the higher the fertility rate (Ahn and Mira 2002; Adsera 2005). Further investiga-

tions have shown that women’s employment status (if they are permanently or

temporary employed, unemployed, self-employed, or nonactive) plays an even

greater role in fertility decisions than the employment rate in general (Adsera

2005; Adsera and Menendez 2011; Del Bono, Weber, and Winter-Ebmer 2011).

This study investigates the impact of job instability on fertility intentions for

young adults across European countries. Fertility intentions or desired number

of children or plans to have a child are widely taken as indicators measuring fertil-

ity behavior of a population (Modena and Sabatini 2012; Dommermuth, Klobas,

and Lappegård 2015; Karabchuk 2017). Job instability includes temporary

employment, informal employment, and unemployment. Recent studies have

revealed that most nonpermanent types of work are insecure; have no social ben-

efits; and are associated with lack of career opportunities, long-term unemploy-

ment, entrapment in temporary jobs, and wage losses (Sverke and Hellgren 2002;

Kalleberg 2011; Yu 2012). Due to unstable income and uncertainty in the future,

job instability leads young adults to postpone marriage and childbearing (Adsera

2005; Kreyenfeld 2010; Kalleberg 2011).

A few single-country case studies have highlighted the negative impact of job

instability on fertility and plans for childbearing (Adsera and Menendez 2011; Del

Bono, Weber, and Winter-Ebmer 2011; Modena and Sabatini 2012; Auer and

Danzer 2016), but there is a lack of research on job instability and fertility that

takes a cross-national perspective. Further, there is a paucity of research that

focuses on labor market regulations as a main predictor of job instability. Therefore,

the goal of this article is to explore the effects of job instability on fertility intentions

among European young adults and the extent to which cross-national differences

in employment protection legislation (EPL)1 explain these effects. I use data from

the 2004 and 2010 European Social Survey (ESS) in the analyses.

The article is organized as follows: in the next section, I discuss demographics

and the literature on job instability and EPL. I then move on to theoretical

frameworks and hypotheses and a description of data and research methodology.

Finally, I provide the analysis and discuss the empirical results and conclusions.

Fertility Decline and Job Instability

Against the background of declining world birth rates, several patterns of fertility

dynamics in Europe took shape in the 2000s (see Table A1 in the appendix).

Some countries had been experiencing constant growth in fertility rates; and by

2010, fertility in France, Iceland, Ireland, Sweden, and the UK reached about

two children per female. Most European countries witnessed moderate increases,

but the rates were still below replacement level in Russia, Slovenia, the

Netherlands, and Estonia, among other countries. A third group of countries had

negative or frozen dynamics, with very low fertility rates—Germany, Slovakia,

Latvia, and Italy, to name a few (Table A1).