Do Women Working in the Public Sector Have It Easier to Become Mothers in Spain?

Teresa Martin Garcia, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Teresa Castro Martin, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)

The increasing levels of educational attainment and labour participation among the youngest generations are frequently used by the defenders of the economic theory of the family as main factors in the rise in delayed marriages, the decline in fertility and the emergence of childfree lifestyles. However, an increasing number of studies cast doubt on the assumption that a woman’s accumulation of human capital and labour participation per se must result in lower fertility. The (un)feasibility of family-work reconciliation issue is crucial in the decision. This paper investigates to what extent public employment affects women’s reproductive behaviour in Spain. It specifically explores whether and how public sector positions improve women’s chances of combining a career with childbearing. Event-history analyses are applied to retrospective reproductive and work biographies from the Spanish Fertility Survey (CIS 2006), which has a sample size of 5,271 women aged 15-55.