Does employment uncertainty particularly impact fertility of children of North African immigrants in France? A gender perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates whether unemployment and insecure employment lead to delaying first childbearing in France, and whether these impacts are likely to differ between children of immigrants from North Africa and natives across genders. Data come from pooling two cohorts of French school-leavers followed over 7–10 years. Findings show that women of North African descent have a first child later than native women, whereas results for men are not significantly ethnic origin-differentiated. Unemployment and non-permanent employment are related to postponement of fertility for both men and women. Current unemployment affects the children of immigrants from North Africa more than their counterparts with no direct migration background. Persistent unemployment does not have any significant effect on childbearing for the women of North African immigrant descent, while it strongly reduces that of the men. While employment uncertainty thus tends to delay first parenthood, its impact seems to occur more through the timing of couple formation than through the timing of conception among children of immigrants from North Africa.

KEYWORDS:

• Unemployment
• fertility
• assimilation
• children of immigrants
• longitudinal data

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In particular, increasing family allowances and income tax deductions with the number of children.

2 Individuals responding in the final round were surveyed in every preceding round, by construction of the survey.

3 Trends in fertility behaviour have not changed much in the six years between the two surveys, even since the economic downturn of 2008 (Mazuy, Barbieri, and d’Albis 2013).

4 Together with children of immigrants from Southern Europe (Beauchemin, Lhommeau, and Simon 2015).

5 This model was chosen over the Cox semi-parametric model, which did not seem to respect the property of proportionality over time of the impacts of several explanatory variables, such as educational level.

6 In fact, as the month of conception is derived from the date of birth, it is the last month where it is possible to establish whether conception occurred, given the interview month.

7 All forms of insecure employment: temporary job, state-funded contract, short-term employment, seasonal job.

8 Note that more detailed information on marital status is not available in the datasets.