Sena Coskun and Husnu Dalgic establish in this IAB-Discussion Paper a link between fertility and the macroeconomic and gender dynamics of the labor market.
Fertility in the US exhibits an increasingly more procyclical pattern. We argue that women’s breadwinner status is behind procyclical fertility: (i) Women’s relative income in the family has increased over time; and (ii) women are more likely to work in relatively stable and countercyclical industries whereas men tend to work in volatile and procyclical industries. This creates a countercyclical gender income gap as women become breadwinners in recessions, producing an insurance effect of women’s income.