The Impact of Female Employment on the Likelihood and Timing of Second and Higher Order Pregnancies

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of married women's employment on their fertility behavior in the United States. Data from the National Survey of Family and Households are used in a hazard model to determine whether a woman's employment status affected the rate at which she had a second, third or fourth pregnancy. The study finds that the labor-force participation of women does have an important effect on the spacing of pregnancies, although the effect is less pronounced in the transition to third pregnancy. In addition, this paper demonstrates that an appropriate method of modeling the fertility and female employment relationship is one in which employment is seen to influence the rate of childbearing.