Labor Economics Commons^™

Fertility And Female Labor Force Participation: The Role Of Legal Access To Contraceptives, Chaney Skadsen

Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development—Student Research

Around the world there has been a global trend of falling fertility rates and increasing female labor force participation rates, simultaneously. The negative association between the two provides impetus to investigate whether fertility acts as an obstruction to the labor market for women and the possibility of incompatibility between motherhood and employee. I find that fertility only acts as an inhibiter to the labor force for women when instrumented with legal access to sterilization as a form of contraception among the other three forms tested. Therefore, when permanent forms of contraceptives are legal and available it allows for more women …