Dataset Information

Beyond the Great Recession: Labor Market Polarization and Ongoing Fertility Decline in the United States.

ABSTRACT: In the years since the Great Recession, social scientists have anticipated that economic recovery in the United States, characterized by gains in employment and median household income, would augur a reversal of declining fertility trends. However, the expected post-recession rebound in fertility rates has yet to materialize. In this study, I propose an economic explanation for why fertility rates have continued to decline regardless of improvements in conventional economic indicators. I argue that ongoing structural changes in U.S. labor markets have prolonged the financial uncertainty that leads women and couples to delay or forgo childbearing. Combining statistical and survey data with restricted-use vital registration records, I examine how cyclical and structural changes in metropolitan-area labor markets were associated with changes in total fertility rates (TFRs) across racial/ethnic groups from the early 1990s to the present day, with a particular focus on the 2006-2014 period. The findings suggest that changes in industry composition-specifically, the loss of manufacturing and other goods-producing businesses-have a larger effect on TFRs than changes in the unemployment rate for all racial/ethnic groups. Because structural changes in labor markets are more likely to be sustained over time-in contrast to unemployment rates, which fluctuate with economic cycles-further reductions in unemployment are unlikely to reverse declining fertility trends.

SUBMITTER: Seltzer N

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7197790 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Beyond the Great Recession: Labor Market Polarization and Ongoing Fertility Decline in the United States.

Seltzer Nathan N

Demography 20190801 4

In the years since the Great Recession, social scientists have anticipated that economic recovery in the United States, characterized by gains in employment and median household income, would augur a reversal of declining fertility trends. However, the expected post-recession rebound in fertility rates has yet to materialize. In this study, I propose an economic explanation for why fertility rates have continued to decline regardless of improvements in conventional economic indicators. I argue t ...[more]

PMID: 31214946

Similar Datasets

Project description:We demonstrate widening socioeconomic disparities in perceived economic distress among Americans, characterized by increasing distress at the bottom and improved perceptions at the top of the socioeconomic ladder. We then assess the extent to which hardships related to the Great Recession account for the growing social disparity in economic distress. Based on the concept of loss aversion, we also test whether the psychological pain associated with a financial loss is greater than the perceived benefit of an equivalent gain. Analyses are based on longitudinal survey data from the Midlife Development in the US study. Results suggest that widening social disparities in perceived economic distress between the mid-2000s and mid-2010s are explained in part by differential exposure to hardships related to the Great Recession, the effects of which have lingered even four to five years after the recession officially ended. Yet, auxiliary analyses show that the socioeconomic disparities in economic distress widened by nearly as much (if not more) during the period from 1995-96 to 2004-05 as they did during the period in which the recession occurred, which suggests that the factors driving these trends may have already been in motion prior to the recession. Consistent with the loss aversion hypothesis, perceptions of financial strain appear to be somewhat more strongly affected by losses in income/assets than by gains, but the magnitude of the differentials are small and the results are not robust. Our findings paint a dismal portrait of a growing socioeconomic divide in economic distress throughout the period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s, although we cannot say whether these trends afflict all regions of the US equally. Spatial analysis of aggregate-level mortality and objective economic indicators could provide indirect evidence, but ultimately economic "despair" must be measured subjectively by asking people how they perceive their financial situations.

Dataset Information

Beyond the Great Recession: Labor Market Polarization and Ongoing Fertility Decline in the United States.

Publications

Beyond the Great Recession: Labor Market Polarization and Ongoing Fertility Decline in the United States.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets