Job Insecurity and Entry into Parenthood: Complicating Inequalities across Gender, Birth Cohorts, and Education in a Lowest-Low Fertility Setting

Alberto Del Rey Poveda, University of Salamanca
Mengyao Wu, University of Salamanca
Jesús García-Gómez, Centre for Demographic Studies
Guillermo Orfao, University of Salamanca
Lidia Bonilla, Universidad de Salamanca

The aim of the paper is to analyse the relationship between labour participation and fertility from a gender perspective in a country with very low and very late fertility. In particular, we focus on analysing the effect of achieving labour stability on the birth of the first child, considering different profiles according to educational level and generation of birth. We expect to find different effects of job stability on fertility according to sex, educational level and birth generation. The data source is the 2018 Spanish Fertility Survey. This retrospective survey allows the application of survival models to analyse the birth of the first child over the life course. The results show that the effect of job stability on the birth of the first child is different for men and women. On the one hand, although for both men and women job stability favours having a first child, for women working without job stability, their probability of becoming a mother is reduced with respect to women who have never worked. On the other hand, job stability only has a positive effect on the most recent generations of men and women, and at higher educational levels.

Keywords: Human Capital, Education, and Work, Fertility, Gender Dynamics, Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination

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