The Impacts of Husband’s Job Displacement on Family Dissolution and Fertility Decisions
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Wang, Ling-Mao
Abstract
The analysis of this paper is based on a unique Taiwan administrative data set, which consists of information from various public administrative registers over a six-year period from 1999 to 2005, to examine the impacts of husband’s job displacement on family dissolution and fertility decisions. In order to correct for the possible endogeneity of unemployment, we use the data of job loss owing to plant closure as exogenous measurement of husband’s job loss. Furthermore, we also distinguish reasons of job displacement to investigate whether there are different transmission channels through which job displacement affects family behaviors.
We use correlated random effect probit model and fixed effect logit model to estimate respectively the impacts of husband’s job loss on family dissolution and fertility decisions. Results show that couples with the husband experiencing job loss are more likely to dissolve and decrease fertility in the following years. Displacement not due to plant closure has significantly positive effects on marriage dissolution and significantly negative effects on fertility decisions. However, the effect from job loss due to establishment closure is less and statistically more insignificant. We suggest that displacement not due to plant closure captures negative income shocks and may additionally convey new information on the male partner’s characteristics other than future earning capacity. Husband’s non-economic suitability, compared with negative income shocks, is more important in determining marriage stability and fertility decisions.
Subjects
job loss
dissolution
fertility
SDGs
Type
thesis
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