Employment Uncertainty and Fertility Intentions: Stability or Resilience?

The role of employment uncertainty as a fertility driver has been studied with a limited set of constructs, leading to inconclusive results. We address this oversight by considering perceived stability of employment and perceived resilience to potential job loss as two key dimensions of employment uncertainty in relation to fertility decision-making. The present study was conducted using the newly-released 2017 OECD Italian Trustlab survey and its built-in module on self-assessed employment uncertainty. Our results suggest that perception of resilience to job loss is a powerful predictor of fertility intentions, whereas perception of employment stability has only a limited impact. The observed relationship between resilience and fertility intentions is robust to the inclusion of person-specific risk attitude and it does not depend on aggregate-level variables, such as the unemployment rate and fixed-term contract rates in the area of residence. In all, this study lends support to the view that fertility is affected not only by current employment circumstances, but also by employment expectations, including perceived resilience to potential job loss.