Did Organized Labor Induce Labor? Unionization and the American Baby Boom

Abstract

Labor unions have many well-documented effects on economic outcomes that are plausibly related to family formation. I study the impact of unionization on fertility using evidence from the largest expansion of unionism in American history: the enactment of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). I introduce new estimates of local union membership and exploit variation in exposure to the NLRA shock to estimate the place level effect of union growth on fertility outcomes. Unionization has positive effects on birth rates and completed fertility, and can account for approximately 20% of overall fertility increases during the Baby Boom. Effects are driven primarily by wage growth, protection against adverse labor market shocks, and impacts on female labor force participation.

Keywords: fertility, Baby Boom, National Labor Relations Act, collective bargaining, labor unions

JEL Classification: J13, J51, N32