Home-based work and childbearing

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

February 6, 2024

Summary:

We examine the timely yet greatly under-researched interplay between home-based work (HBW) and women’s birth transitions. Past research has shown that HBW may facilitate and/or jeopardize work–family balance, depending on the worker’s family and work circumstances. Following that research, we develop here a theoretical framework on how HBW can facilitate or hinder fertility. Using the UK Household Longitudinal Study 2009–19 and random-effects cloglog regression, we study the link between HBW and first- and second-birth risks. We find that HBW is negatively associated with the transition to motherhood and unrelated to the progression to a second child. We also show that HBW helps to enable women to have children if they would otherwise face a long commute. All in all, our findings do not support the idea that the spread of HBW will lead to an immediate increase in fertility.

Published in

Population Studies

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2023.2287510

ISSN

324728

Subjects

Notes

Open Access

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

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