The Great Recession, Fertility, and Uncertainty: Evidence From the United States

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12212
• Date: 01 October 2015
• Published date: 01 October 2015
• Author: Daniel Schneider

D S University of California, Berkeley

The Great Recession, Fertility, and Uncertainty:

Evidence From the United States

The Great Recession produced the highest rates

of unemployment and foreclosure in the United

States since the Great Depression. In this arti-

cle the author examines the consequences of

these poor economic conditions for fertility in

the United States by estimating the effect of

area-level economic conditions on state fertil-

ity in the years leading up to and including the

Great Recession. The economic impacts of the

Great Recession, captured by state-level eco-

nomic conditions, had a strong negative effect

on fertility in models with state and year xed

effects. These reductions in fertility were likely

caused both by increased economic hardship

and increased economic uncertainty.

The economic effects of the Great Recession

have been readily apparent in high levels of

unemployment and unprecedented levels of

mortgage foreclosure. These economic effects

have also had important social consequences

for American families. The Great Recession

led some couples to put off divorce (Cherlin,

Cumberworth, Morgan, & Wimer,2013; Cohen,

2014), reduced relationship quality (Schneider,

Harknett, & McLanahan, 2014), and increased

doubling-up in households (Wiemers, 2014). It

also appears that the Great Recession lowered

fertility in the United States. This question

has received enormous attention in the popular

Department of Sociology, Universityof California, 480

Barrows Hall, Berkeley,CA 94720

(djschneider@berkeley.edu).

Key Words: fertility, recession,unemployment.

press but has been subject to little detailed

demographic analysis. The relationship between

recession and fertility captures the public inter-

est and is of academic note both because it

speaks to the real social effects of economic

downturns and also because such patterns reveal

a regularity in social life, a way in which sur-

prising economic events may have predictable

effects.

Analyses of the effect of economic con-

ditions on fertility in the United States have

a long scholarly history (Ogburn & Thomas,

1922). Seminal work by Rindfuss, Morgan, and

Swicegood (1988) found a negative relation-

ship between rst births and unemployment

in a period including the Great Depression. In

addition, a number of studies have examined

the relationship between normal business cycles

and fertility and found evidence of modest

negative effects over the second half of the 20th

century (e.g., Schaller, 2012). A much larger

body of research has investigated how economic

conditions have affected fertility in Europe and

has found evidence of negative effects across

a number of countries (Sobotka, Skirbekk, &

Philipov, 2011). All of this work has sought to

understand the social effects of macro-economic

variation and sharp downturns.

Several recent studies have provided

early evidence that the Great Recession has

reduced fertility (Ananat, Gassman-Pines, &

Gibson-Davis, 2013; Cherlin et al., 2013; Mor-

gan, Cumberland, & Wimer, 2011a). However,

our understanding of the Great Recession’s

effects on fertility remains incomplete. First, the

few studies to date have not considered the full

1144 Journal of Marriage and Family 77 (October 2015): 1144–1156

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12212