Women’s income and childbearing in context

Abstract

The objective of this article is to examine the association between women’s income and first birth risks in two fairly similar countries: Denmark and Finland. The benefit of comparing these two countries is that observed variation in fertility behaviour might be attributed to the few differences in context factors, with a special focus on detailed differences in family policies. The economic theory of fertility, as well as models about bargaining processes within the family, serve as a theoretical framework for explaining individual childbearing decisions within the specific context of each country. Discrete time multiple regressions are estimated to test the hypotheses on the data from the European Community Household Panel (1994–2001). In Denmark, women’s income has a positive effect on first birth risks, but the effect in Finland is insignificant. A second result is that Finnish women who earn more than their partner have lower first birth risks than those earning approximately the same.