Job loss and births. A couple-level study of Norwegian plant closures

In dual-earner settings, whether fertility responses to job loss reflect gendered mechanisms is not theoretically unambiguous. This paper examines how job loss due to plant closures – a plausibly exogenous employment shock – affects couples' fertility in Norway. Using Norwegian register data (2005-2017) linked to private-sector employment records (2005-2014), we estimate discrete-time event history models of first- and second-birth transitions within three years after a plant-closure job loss experienced by either partner. Norway is a theoretically relevant case because welfare-state buffering limits short-run income losses, and the Great Recession hit relatively mildly, helping explore the role of uncertainty in shaping fertility responses to job loss. Results indicate that job loss disrupts childbirth in gendered and stratified ways. Female partner's job loss in a couple reduces entry into parenthood, and this effect persists net of household income at the time of job loss. Male partner job loss in a couple reduces progression to a second child and is partly mediated by income, and is strongest after the Great Recession. Moreover, couples with fewer resources are more exposed to fertility penalties, especially for second births following male displacement. The limited role of income suggests that fertility responses to job loss are not reducible to short-run financial constraints. Instead, they reflect how employment structures couples' life-course planning and perceived readiness for parenthood. That female job loss deters entry into parenthood while male job loss deters expansion implies that economic-role convergence has not paralleled convergence in the social meaning of job loss.