Roadblocks on the Road to Grandma’s House: Fertility Consequences of Delayed Retirement

Erich Battistin (), Michele De Nadai and Mario Padula

No 748, Working Papers from Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance

Abstract: We investigate the role of grandparental childcare for fertility decisions of their offspring. Exploiting pension reforms in Italy, we argue that delayed retirement represents a negative shock to the supply of informal childcare for the next generation. We show that, when the maternal grandmother is not available, motherhood after age 30 is less likely. This effect persists as the woman ages, and parallels that on number of children. We argue that these are permanent changes to completed fertility for many cohorts in our data. Consistent with our interpretation, we show that results are limited to the most familistic close-knits where the role of grandparents is more important, and that are not the mechanical consequence of changes of living arrangements and labor supply. Given the Italian lowest low fertility, we conclude that pension reforms may have had unintended inter-generational effects.

Keywords: Fertility; Informal child care; Pension reforms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H42 J08 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-06-23
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Roadblocks on the Road to Grandma's House: Fertility Consequences of Delayed Retirement (2014)
Working Paper: Roadblocks on the Road to Grandma's House: Fertility Consequences of Delayed Retirement (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qmw:qmwecw:748

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