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Working Papers
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The
Politics of Low Fertility: Global Markets,
Women’s Employment, and Birth Rates in
Four Industrialized Democracies
Frances
Rosenbluth, Matthew Light, and Claudia Schrag
Department
of Political Science
Yale
University
August
2002
Abstract:
This
paper argues that fertility in industrialized countries is strongly affected by
a woman’s ability to balance family and career.
In liberal market economies such as the U.S. where women have access to labor markets but not to
socialized child care, career success comes at the price of fertility: women who
make the most money have the fewest children. Fertility in coordinated market economies was
divided into the high fertility Scandinavian countries, where the government supported
child care and public sector employment of women, and the low fertility countries
elsewhere where corporatist wage bargaining have largely left women out of the
protected core work force. Global economic integration has reduced fertility
in the gender-friendly Scandinavian countries to levels close to the rest of Europe.
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Updated 25 March 2003
http://www.yale.edu/polisci/rosenbluth/index1.htm