Puerto Rican women: The effects of economic and social policies on opportuni ty costs

The off-observed inverse relationship between economic activity in the formal or informal sector and levels of fertility is attributed to the opportunity costs of reproduction. The economic and social policies that initiate and maintain the substantial flow of federal transfer payments to the Puerto Rican population is likely to reduce the opportunity costs among women participating in the informal economy; therefore, informal labor market participants will have fertility levels more like women who have never worked than like women active in the formal labor market. Using data from the 1982 Puerto Rican Fertility and Family Planning Assessment, this paper compares fertility differentials among ever-married women who have never worked, who have ever worked in the informal economy, and who have only worked in the formal economy. Contrary to expectations, the fertility levels of informal labor market participants are more like those of formal labor market participants; economic activity in either sector is associated with bearing fewer children. Federal transfer payments do not appear to reduce the opportunity costs of reproduction among women employed in the informal economy. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1989 meeting of the Population Association of America. In more-industrialized societies, an inverse relationship is most often observed between women's productive and reproductive activities, although in lessindustrialized countries the relationship is not as clear (Conning & Marckwardt, 1982; Rodriguez & Cleland, 1981). Several recent studies have suggested that lower levels of fertility may be observed in women who work away from home but that women who work in home industries may not have lower levels of fertility (Chi & Harris, 1975; Hass, 1971; Jaffe & Azumi, 1960). Women who work away from home are presumed to experience greater degrees of work and family role incompatibilities, to possess a stronger commitment to the work role, and to have more human capital (e.g., education, work experience and training) than women who work in home industries or women who do not work at all. Standing (1978) suggests that opportunity costs, the underlying mechanism in this neo-classical economic framework, vary by type of labor market structure. Variations in opportunity costs then explain contradictory findings in less-industrialized countries. This paper argues that opportunity costs do vary by the type of employment