James Raymo, University of Wisconsin, Madison
CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles"Precarious employment and fertility: Insights from Japan’s “Lost 20 Years”"
Abstract: In this paper, we examine relationships between precarious employment and fertility. We focus on Japan, a country characterized by a prolonged economic downturn, significant increases in both unemployment and non-standard employment, a strong link between marriage and childbearing, and pronounced gender differences in economic roles and opportunities. Analyses of retrospective employment, marriage, and fertility data for the period 1990-2007 indicate that changing employment circumstances for men are associated with lower levels of marriage while changes for women are associated with higher levels of marital fertility. These two offsetting relationships combine to limit the overall association between changes in employment circumstances and declining fertility. Results of counterfactual standardization analyses suggest that Japan’s total fertility rate (TFR) would have been slightly lower than observed if aggregate- and individual-level employment conditions had remained unchanged from the 1980s. We discuss the implications of these results in light of ongoing policy discussions about fertility promotion and academic debates about the changing nature of gender relations within the family.