Fertility, female labor force participation, and the demographic dividend

By David E. Bloom, David Canning, Guenther Fink, J. Finlay. 2009

714 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We estimate the effect of fertility on female labor force participation in a panel of countries using abortion legislation as an instrument for fertility. We find that removing legal restrictions on abortion significantly reduces fertility and estimate that, on average, a birth reduces a woman’s labor supply by almost 2 years during her reproductive life. Our results imply that behavioral change, in the form of increased female labor supply, contributes significantly to economic growth during the demographic transition when fertility declines.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Gender Studies, General Health Professions

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a5688b881ffa3b54c03e9bbdc21835b7f1ebe295

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

In Gender Studies

In General Health Professions

Citations in the corpus

Cash or Condition? Evidence from a Cash Transfer Experiment (2011, background): “At the macro level, improved cognition may lead to more growth (Hanushek and Woessmann 2009), while lower fertility rates may also contribute to economic growth through increased female labor supply (Bloom et al. 2009) and by allowing greater investments in the health and education of children.”
Gender Equality and Economic Growth: Is there a Win‐Win? (2013, background): “23 participation is high in low-income agrarian economies with close linkages between household and market production, that it begins to decline as economies move into formal manufacturing and services as the basis of growth but that at a subsequent stage, structural changes combined with rising fem”
Gender Socialization during Adolescence in Low- and Middle-Income Countries : Conceptualization, influences and outcomes (2017, background): “…allows girls’ and women’s lives to be less defined by their reproductive roles, and provides an opportunity to adopt other roles in their households and communities, by continuing their education or joining the labour force (Bloom et al., 2009; Caceres-Delpiano, 2012; Schultz, 2005; Schultz, 2009).”
Gender Equality in Employment in Africa: Empirical Analysis and Policy Implications (2013, background): “On the other hand, the substitution effect works in the opposite direction— as female wages rise, more women have the incentive to enter the labor market (Goldin, 1995; Mammen and Paxson, 2000; Bloom et al., 2009; Chaudhuri, 2009; Tam, 2011).”
Life expectancy and economic growth: the role of the demographic transition (2011, neutral): “6 The role of dependency ratios is studied in Bloom et al. (2003), and the interaction between fertility and labor force participation is investigated by Bloom et al. (2009).”
Development goals in an era of demographic change (2015, background): “These policies include improving maternal and child health; expanding education, particularly for girls; and empowering women in the household, in the labor force, and in the economy more generally (Bloom et al. 2009; Soares and Falcão 2008; World Bank 2015a).”
Economic development, structural change, and women’s labor force participation: (2013, positive): “In fact, there is some macro- and micro-support that fertility reductions are linked to increasing female labor force participation (Bloom et al. 2009; Angrist and Evans 1998), though there is conflicting evidence whether this also holds for developing countries (Cruces and Galiani 2007; Priebe…”
Intrahousehold Bargaining, Female Autonomy, and Labor Supply: Theory and Evidence from India (2020, background): “1In particular, there is much research on the relationship between fertility (Goldin and Katz 2002; Bloom et al. 2009; Agüero and Marks 2011) or childcare costs (Connelly, 1992) and female labor supply.”