Scholarlink

<p>Fertility remains persistently low across advanced economies despite progress in gender equality and the expansion of family policy. This study reexamines the gender–fertility relationship by jointly estimating the effects of women’s political empowerment and family-related public spending on period and tempo-adjusted fertility. The analysis draws on annual data for 30 OECD countries from 2003 to 2021, measuring public-sphere gender equality with the Women’s Political Empowerment Index and family-policy effort with public expenditure on family benefits as a percentage of GDP. Two-way fixed-effects models relate two-year-lagged predictors to the total fertility rate (TFR) and a tempo-adjusted TFR (adjTFR), net of macroeconomic, labor-market, housing, and normative controls. Under the identifying assumptions of the design, women’s political empowerment shows no detectable causal effect on either fertility measure. By contrast, family-related public spending has a positive estimated causal effect on both TFR and adjTFR. The estimated effect is larger and more precise for TFR than for adjTFR. The significant adjTFR effect indicates that the effect is not confined to tempo-related variation in period fertility, while the larger TFR estimate is consistent with an additional timing-sensitive component, although this interpretation remains suggestive rather than established. Overall, family-policy effort is a more consistently detectable driver of fertility—particularly period fertility—than women’s political empowerment. Alternative gender-equality indicators yield divergent estimates, indicating that conclusions about the gender equality–fertility relationship depend on how gender equality is operationalized.</p>

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

Gender Equity, Family Policy, and Fertility: Evidence from 30 OECD Countries, 2003–2021

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年7月27日

查看全文
  • Sam Hyun Yoo

摘要

Fertility remains persistently low across advanced economies despite progress in gender equality and the expansion of family policy. This study reexamines the gender–fertility relationship by jointly estimating the effects of women’s political empowerment and family-related public spending on period and tempo-adjusted fertility. The analysis draws on annual data for 30 OECD countries from 2003 to 2021, measuring public-sphere gender equality with the Women’s Political Empowerment Index and family-policy effort with public expenditure on family benefits as a percentage of GDP. Two-way fixed-effects models relate two-year-lagged predictors to the total fertility rate (TFR) and a tempo-adjusted TFR (adjTFR), net of macroeconomic, labor-market, housing, and normative controls. Under the identifying assumptions of the design, women’s political empowerment shows no detectable causal effect on either fertility measure. By contrast, family-related public spending has a positive estimated causal effect on both TFR and adjTFR. The estimated effect is larger and more precise for TFR than for adjTFR. The significant adjTFR effect indicates that the effect is not confined to tempo-related variation in period fertility, while the larger TFR estimate is consistent with an additional timing-sensitive component, although this interpretation remains suggestive rather than established. Overall, family-policy effort is a more consistently detectable driver of fertility—particularly period fertility—than women’s political empowerment. Alternative gender-equality indicators yield divergent estimates, indicating that conclusions about the gender equality–fertility relationship depend on how gender equality is operationalized.