John Ermisch

A microeconomic analysis of the timing of births

Abstract The effects of personal characteristics, wage rates and career structures on the time-profile of childbearing among married couples are examined theoretically, through an intertemporal microeconomic model of family decisions, and empirically, by an econometric analysis of British womens childbearing and work histories. The effects of the mothers age on the ‘quality’ of the child, and the financial implications of interrupting the mothers career to care for a child are taken explicitly into account. The demographic consequences of economic policies are also examined.

Purchased child care, optimal family size and mother's employment Theory and econometric analysis

The paper develops a model of family size decisions in which couples choose explicitly a combination of mothers time and purchased childcare (e.g. childminders, nannies) for the care and rearing of children. The theoretical model implies that the impact of the mothers wage on her completed fertility varies with the market price of childcare, and that this effect increases (becoming less negative or more positive) with the level of her wage. Econometric analysis of British micro-data confirms the main predictions of the model.

Wage offers and full-time and part-time employment by British women

Strong evidence in support of the hypothesis that women receive lower wage offers in part-time jobs than in full-time jobs is provided by estimation of wage offer functions for British women, which control for self-selection into these two types of jobs. Analysis of married womens employment decisions indicates that the difference in a womans expected wage offers between full-time and part-time employment is an important determinant of whether she works full time, while husbands income mainly affects the decision of whether to work. In addition, it appears that women who work despite having observed characteristics that discourage employment are much more likely to work part time.

Gender Discrimination in the British Labour Market: A Reassessment

For the first time, nationally representative data on womens employment histories are used to study the gap between womens and mens pay in Great Britain. It is decomposed into a gap attributable to gender differences in human capital characteristics (such as education, work experience, and time spent out of employment by women), and a gap attributable to gender discrimination. Using data collected in the 1980 Women and Employment Survey, we find that womens wages would be between 20 and 25 per cent higher in the absence of discrimination. This is somewhat higher than previous estimates have indicated.

Cohabitation in Great Britain: not for long, but here to stay

This paper uses a new source of data to study the dramatic increase in cohabiting unions in Great Britain. It analyses, in turn, entry into first partnership, the stability of cohabiting unions and repartnering after dissolution of cohabitation. In excess of 70% of first partnerships are now cohabitations, and these last a relatively short time before being either turned into marriage or dissolved. The shift to cohabitation as the dominant mode of first partnership plays an important role in the delay of first marriage and motherhood. The paper also investigates the factors that are associated with the outcome of cohabitations.

Family Structure, Home Time Demands, and the Employment Patterns of Japanese Married Women

A recent (1990) national survey is used in an econometric analysis of Japanese womens hourly pay and employment patterns. It confirms many results from Western industrial countries but also indicates the important influence of Japans unique family structure, the persistence of multigenerational households, on married womens employment patterns. Younger married women are more likely to take paid employment in such households, particularly on a full-time basis, than in nuclear family households. This appears to reflect in part the child-care role played by the womans parents or parents-in-law.

Econometric Analysis of Birth Rate Dynamics in Britain

Cointegration methods suitable for estimation and testing with nonstationary data are applied to U.S. time-series data on age-specific fertility rates, female labor force participation rates, womens wages, unemployment rates and educational attainment, ...

Partnership Dissolution in the UK--The Role of Economic Circumstances

Estimates based on couples with dependent children in the first eight years of the British Household Panel Study (1991-98) indicate that changes in a couples economic circumstances affect the probability that a partnership dissolves. In particular, unexpected improvements in finances substantially reduce the dissolution risk, which strongly supports the importance of new information in decisions concerning partnership dissolution. Measures of a couples own expectations concerning their financial situation over the coming year have been used in conjunction with realised changes to gauge the impact of unexpected changes. The study also finds that the risk of partnership dissolution increases with the number of children. Copyright 2001 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Educational choice, families, and young people's earnings

This paper presents two optimizing models of educational choice, discusses issues of identification, estimates earnings equations in the context of these models, and presents conditions under which we can test one against the other. The estimates indicate that education is endogenous for young peoples earnings, creating a downward bias in estimated returns from education that assume exogeneity. Identification and estimation relies on family background information from a special sample from the British Household Panel Study 1991-95, which matches mothers and their young adult children. Our estimates favor a family model over an individual model, and they suggest that parents allocate resources to education to compensate for differences in their childrens earnings endowments.

The Next Birth and the Labour Market: A Dynamic Model of Births in England and Wales

The object of this paper is to see how far developments in the labour market can help to explain the fluctuations in births which have been experienced over the period 1952-1980 in England and Wales. We examine separately the period rate of childless women proceeding to the first birth, mothers of one child proceeding to a second birth, mothers of two proceeding to a third birth, and mothers of three proceeding to a fourth birth. Our analysis shows that different birth orders respond differently to economic variables, and different age groups within a parity also exhibit varying responses. We have found that growing real wages for both men and women tend to deter older parents from adding to existing families. In the early stages of family building, births are inhibited by labour markets favourable to women. But conditions in the male labour market have the reverse effect on early breeding.