The effect of women’s participation in labour market on postponement of childbearing: a comparison between Italy and Hungary

Abstract

This paper analyses the effect of the increasing female participation in the labour market onthe transition to first childbirth. In this analysis both the ge nerational and the regional perspective are taken into account to understand, how postponement behaviour is spreading from one region to the other and from one generation to the next. The analysis is based on the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey of Italy and Hungary. It adopts a multilevel event history model to focus on the micro-level relationship between the transition to adulthood and reproductive behaviour, to understand the empirical importance of macro-level factors related to regional socio-economic and cultural differences and to indicate differences in micro-level relationships among people of different family, socio-economic, and educational backgrounds. The results of the model shows that the delayed entry into labour market has a significant negative effect on the probability of having a child. This effect remains significant also controlling for generations, regional heterogeneity and increasing of female participation.