Employment Instability and Fertility Timing in France: An Application of Turbulence to Labor Market Trajectories}

Since the longstanding notion that economic well-being was associated with lower fertility levels started to be called into question, there has been a renovated interest in understanding the relationship between economic hardship and fertility decisions. So far, most studies have approached the idea of uncertainty using snapshot indicators like type of contract or employment situation. However, these types of measures seem to be falling short in capturing what is intrinsically a dynamic process. In this paper I approach the concept of economic uncertainty developing an indicator of employment instability that considers the entire employment trajectory. Using sequence analysis I first classify trajectories based on their degree of instability, by considering the amount of change and the time spent in each employment/unemployment spell. The outcome is later used as an independent variable to estimate its effect on completed cohort fertility. Analyzes are performed for French men and women using the first two waves of the Generations and Gender Surveys. Although France is characterized by strong family policies, we expect employment instability to have a significant effect on fertility decisions, especially in the case of couples that struggle to reconcile family and career aspirations.