A Question of Security? Career Instability and Transition to Parenthood

Ana Karalashvili , Humboldt University Berlin
Christian Brzinsky-Fay, University of Hamburg

This study investigates the impact of economic uncertainty on parenthood timing in Germany's low fertility context. Departing from prior research that mainly examines employment instability around childbirth, our longitudinal analysis introduces a composite measure of labor market participation instability, encompassing both current situations and past experiences. Using life course data from NEPS of men and women born between 1944-1982 (N=11200) in Western Germany, we observe the time until the first childbirth over two decades post-school departure. We illustrate that the instability measure predicts the uncertainty effect for women as hypothesized in the previous literature, while traditional metrics like unemployment duration or transitions into unemployment fail to capture this effect. Moreover, we show that the direction of this effect is stratified by gender and largely depends on whether transitions are precarious or not. Our findings highlight the necessity of adopting a dynamic, life-course-sensitive approach in exploring the relationship between uncertainty and fertility.

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 Presented in Session 112. Flash session Gender, Work and Parenthood