Effect of women’s labor market participation on a fertility rate

A fertility rate has a significant impact on the economy of the countries both in the short and the long term. The declining fertility rates cause some problems such as an aging population, a shortage in the labour market supply, a shrinkage in the GDP of the countries, or less future innovations. Considering the hazardous results of the decreasing fertility rates, it is crucial to discover what factors can have an impact on the rate of the fertility. Especially, the effect of the labour market participation of women on the number of childbirths is a focus of this thesis. The goal is to find the relationship between the fertility rate and women’s employment rate within chosen countries in given time interval. Additionally, other factors will also be included to the analysis to define their relationships with the fertility rate. The thesis covers 38 OECD countries and all the variables discussed in the paper are collected from these countries between 1997 and 2017. The thesis starts with an Introduction part where the importance of the topic is discussed, and the research hypotheses are introduced. The Methodology part follows the introduction and covers the theoretical discussion on the models chosen for the paper. Furthermore, in the Data section the variables of the analysis are discussed in depth and the data visualization gives more information about the relationship among the variables. Finally, the Regression results and Discussion of the research hypotheses parts introduce the results of the analysis. The main finding in this paper is that the relationship between the women’s employment rate and the fertility rate is positive in OECD countries during 1997 and 2017.