Persistent Employment Instability and Fertility Intentions

Abstract

Our paper adds to the growing literature on the measurement of employment instability and its consequences on fertility dynamics. Many of these studies disregard that the persistence (duration) in an unstable condition, more than the status itself, may have the most severe consequences on subsequent family choices. In this paper, we propose an index of persistence in employment instability (EINI) that synthesizes all the information inside the individual sequence of employment statuses in a single number accounting simultaneously for the duration, sequencing, intensity, and labour market circumstances. Then, we test its impact on short-term childbearing intentions of Italian couples separately for different parities.