Abstract
The sharp rise in unemployment among the under-35s since the start of the crisis in 2008 has not brought down the total fertility rate, which stood at 1.98 children per woman in metropolitan France in 2014, only marginally below its 2008 level (2.01). But this stability does not mean that unemployment does not affect individual behaviours.
This chapters shows, first, that childless unemployed people less frequently plan to have a child in the short term. Second, beyond fertility intentions, person with experience of unemployment less frequently have a first child.
However, the birth of another child (generally the second) follows a very different rationale. Having a second child is frequent in France (the ideal family has at least two children) and the decision depends mainly (but not solely) on the desired spacing between births. All in all, unemployment does not directly affect women’s childbearing plans, nor those of men who are already fathers.
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Notes
- 1.
In Spain, the fertility decline pre-dated the crisis, but the crisis accentuated it.
- 2.
Only the respondent’s employment status history is known, not that of his/her partner.
- 3.
If the respondent did not remember the exact month, he/she was asked the season.
- 4.
Or less if the respondent considered it an important period in his/her life. These shorter periods are rare, however.
- 5.
See Régnier-Loilier and Guisse (2016) for more details on attrition.
- 6.
Of childbearing age and not known to be infertile (affirmative answer to the question: “Some people cannot have children. To your knowledge, can you have a(nother) child?”.
- 7.
The average time to conception is 3–5 months for a young couple, but it increases sharply with age (Leridon 2004) and is highly variable from one couple to another (some pregnancies occur in the same month as the decision to have a child, others after several years of trying).
- 8.
In the survey, only births and current pregnancies are recorded, not miscarriages or abortions, which are often not reported in surveys.
- 9.
T ranges from 1 to 72, where 1 is the first month after Wave 1, 2 is the second month, and so forth. For the analysis, the observation is actually limited to 68 months since, because of the way we determine the “decision” date to have a child, a person who is one month into a pregnancy in Wave 3 is considered as having decided to conceive fourth months earlier (i.e. at T = 68).
- 10.
The results, from a logit regression model, are not shown here.
- 11.
However, the results by gender (not shown here because of insufficient numbers) do seem to indicate a more pronounced difference in behaviour among men, with unemployed men less frequently having had a first child during the period than employed men.
- 12.
Only periods of unemployment that occurred before the decision to have a child are considered here. If a person experienced a period of unemployment after deciding to have a child, he/she is not considered here as having experienced unemployment (in Fig. 7.3 he/she is included in the category “No periods of unemployment”).
- 13.
We do not take the time spent unemployed into account here (number of months unemployed between the first wave and the decision to have a child or the end of the observation), but a longer period of unemployment may delay a birth for longer (we shall return to this below).
- 14.
A woman who wants to have a child around age 30 has a 75% chance of conceiving within 12 months, a 66% chance if she starts at 35 and a 44% chance if she starts at 40. The probabilities of never conceiving are 8%, 15% and 36%, respectively (Leridon 2004).
- 15.
In the scope of our study, 24% of childless individuals in 2005 experienced a period of unemployment between 2005 and 2011, compared with 18% of parents of one child.
- 16.
It is impossible to survey someone retrospectively about his/her fertility intentions.
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Appendices
Appendices
7.1.1 Appendix 1
Unemployment rate by age, 2000–2001 (Source: INSEE, Employment Survey-CSV data, metropolitan France)
Fertility, 2000–2013 (Source: INSEE, civil registration, metropolitan France)
7.1.2 Appendix 2
Probability of having had a first child/started a first pregnancy between 2005 and 2011 (duration model, Cox), men and women
Childless | Parents | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Model 1 | Model 2 | Model 3 | Model 4 | Model 3 | |
Gender | 0.29*** | 0.32*** | 0.14 | 0.25** | 0.07 |
Age | 0.39*** | 0.40*** | 0.25*** | 0.46*** | 0.06 |
Age 2 | −0.01*** | −0.01*** | −0.01*** | −0.01*** | 0.00 |
Immigrant | |||||
Yes | 0.64*** | 0.62*** | 0.74*** | 0.49** | 0.24 |
No | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. |
Educational level | |||||
Primary | 0.02 | 0.06 | 0.13 | −0.19 | −0.29 |
Vocational secondary | 0.11 | 0.12 | 0.04 | −0.13 | −0.42** |
Mainstream secondary | 0.12 | 0.12 | 0.06 | −0.04 | −0.36* |
Two years of higher education | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. |
More than 2 years of higher education | 0.10 | 0.09 | 0.16 | 0.17 | –0.10 |
In education at T (1–68) | |||||
Yes | −0.96*** | −0.95*** | −0.91*** | −1.13*** | 0.43 |
No | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. |
Past period of unemployment | |||||
Yes | −0.29** | −0.30** | −0.34** | −0.23* | 0.00 |
No | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. |
Unemployed at T (1–68) | |||||
Yes | −0.77** | −0.02 | −0.10 | −0.68* | 0.29 |
No | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. |
Interaction unemployment/gender | −1.31** | −1.18* | −0.40 | −0.79 | |
Size of town of residence (population) | |||||
Rural, population under 5000 | 0.22 | 0.23 | 0.10 | 0.23 | −0.16 |
Town, population 5000–200,000 | 0.11 | 0.11 | 0.11 | 0.12 | 0.07 |
City, population over 200,000 | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. |
Parisian region | −0.12 | −0.12 | −0.07 | −0.06 | −0.01 |
Religious practice | |||||
None | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. |
Less than 6 times a year | 0.06 | 0.06 | 0.23 | 0.03 | −0.29 |
6 times a year or more | 0.09 | 0.07 | 0.12 | −0.01 | −0.09 |
Fertility intention in 2005 | |||||
Yes, within 3 years | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | ||
Yes, probably within 3 years | −1.35*** | −1.51*** | −0.99*** | ||
Yes, probably later | −0.47*** | −0.68*** | −0.30** | ||
In a cohabiting relationship at T (1–68) | |||||
No | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | |
Yes | 2.08*** | 2.10*** | 2.04*** | 1.18*** | |
Total (%) | |||||
Had a child | 390 (39.6) | 279 (50.7) | |||
Did not have a child | 594 (60.4) | 271 (49.3) | |||
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Pailhé, A., Régnier-Loilier, A. (2017). The Impact of Unemployment on the Realization of Fertility Intentions. In: Régnier-Loilier, A. (eds) A Longitudinal Approach to Family Trajectories in France. INED Population Studies, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56001-4_7
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