Is There a Central European Fertility Paradox? Fertility, Women's Labour Market Participation and Household Income and Living Conditions in the European Union

Abstract

Even today, some people believe that fewer children are being born because women have gone out to work, and that fertility would improve if women were allowed to stay at home. The experience of the last 60-70 years in Hungary and Central Europe is quite the opposite. Starting from this paradox, in the present research I sought to find out how fertility in the European Union and in the Member States is related to women's participation in the labour market and to the financial situation of families. The study shows that over the period 2009-2022, female employment rates are correlated with fertility in all Member States, with 19 countries showing a strong correlation, nine with a positive correlation and ten with a negative correlation. In the Eastern Bloc countries, Germany, Portugal, Greece and Austria, the fertility rate and female employment are positively correlated, while in the other countries the correlation is inverted. Since the correlation only shows the strength and direction of the relationship, to find out which of the factors in the relationship cause the change in fertility, I performed a Granger causality analysis. The excess of the relative income poverty rate of those living in households with children over those without children was found to be causally related to fertility in most places, in 9 countries and in the European Union as a whole. In seven countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia), low levels of excess child poverty are associated with higher fertility, and the opposite is true in Ireland and Italy. This was the only causal connection when looking at the 27 EU countries as a unit.