Family Formation and Dissolution in the Context of Dramatic Labour Market Changes Caused by Automation: Evidence from Germany, Sweden and the US

Anna Matysiak , University of Warsaw
Wojciech Hardy, University of Warsaw
Linus Andersson

Recent decades have seen rapid robotization in manufacturing and other automatable sectors. These developments, termed routine-biased technical change, have led to polarization in labor markets. While the highly educated enjoy good employment conditions, the earning and employment opportunities of the other social groups have substantially shrunk, both in the US and Europe. These changes may also affect workers’ family-related behaviors as they substantially change the conditions for earning income. We test this hypothesis by investigating how exposure to automation affects the formation of first marriages by workers, their childbearing behaviors, and marriage stability in three countries: Germany, the US, and Sweden. These countries belong to the most heavily automated economies in the world. Yet, they strongly differ in labor market and welfare policies. In contrast to previous studies on the topic, which relied on aggregated data at the regional level, we make use of individual data from high-quality Swedish registers and panel surveys: the German Socioeconomic Panel and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We link these data with the annual information on robot use by country and industry from the International Federation of Robotics. Our preliminary findings for Sweden suggest that exposure to automation affects workers’ family-related behaviors differently depending on their education level. Robotization has the most detrimental effect on family formation and its stability for low-educated male and medium-educated female workers. Instead, an increase in exposure to automation leads to an increase in marriage and birth risks and a decline in divorce risks among the highly educated.

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 Presented in Session 15. Union Dissolution