Labour Market Deregulation and Completed Fertility in Italy

Giammarco Alderotti, Università di Firenze
Paolo Barbieri, University of Trento
Raffaele Guetto, University of Florence
Stefani Scherer , University of Trento
Daniele Vignoli , University of Florence

Labour market instability has been shown to come with consequences for fertility decisions. Especially in the southern European context insecure employment situations hamper the transition to parenthood. Most research so far has focused on first childbirth, ignoring potential recuperation effects and thus the more encompassing view on cohort fertility. This paper extends on this point and analyses the consequences of employment instabilities on (quasi) completed fertility for men and women in Italy. In a cohort perspective we compare fertility outcomes at age 41 and older among those who experienced labour market deregulation and the consequent segmentation and partial precarisation (cohorts born 1966-1975) to the previous cohort (born 1951-1965), and relate the fertility outcome to the instability of their employment histories. Based on longitudinal data from Istat “Famiglie, Soggetti Sociali e ciclo di vita”, 2016, we find that fragmented employment careers and atypical employment periods come with lower likelihood to ever become a parent and lower number of children than continuous, stable careers. This is true especially for men and for the younger cohorts.

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 Presented in Session 16. Labour Market and Parenthood