The Politics of Low Fertility: Global Markets, Women's Employment, and Birth Rates in Four Industrialized Democracies

Abstract

This paper argues that fertility in industrialized countries is strongly affected by a woman's ability to balance family and career. In liberal market economies such as the U.S. where women have access to labor markets but not to socialized child care, career success comes at the price of fertility: women who make the most money have the fewest children. Fertility in coordinated market economies was divided into the high fertility Scandinavian countries, where the government supported child care and public sector employment of women, and the low fertility countries elsewhere where corporatist wage bargaining have largely left women out of the protected core work force. Global economic integration has reduced fertility in the gender-friendly Scandinavian countries to levels close to the rest of Europe.