Family Policy, Women's Employment, and Below-Replacement Fertility in Developed Countries: A Hierarchical Bayesian Approach

In this paper, we examine the relationship between individual attributes, aggregate female labor force participation, and family policies, (e.g., child care and family leave) on fertility in developed countries using a hierarchical Bayesian model. Data from the European Values Survey, the World Values Survey, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are employed in this analysis. Results indicate that women’s full-time employment and country-level employment rates decreases expected fertility. However, child care services mitigate the decline in fertility, possibly by reducing labor force exit among women with young children. These effects persist when controlling for individual-level predictors, including marital status, educational attainment, and individual labor force participation. Some cross-national variation in individual-level effects is observed, but the qualitative behavior of these predictors is broadly similar across developed nations.