Are these TFR calculations based on location of residence, or birth? If it's the latter, wouldn't this simply be a result of migration from poorly performing economically regions into Seoul?
The spatial panel uses crude birth rates per district with two-way fixed effects, so it's tracking whether changes in deprivation predict changes in fertility within the same district over time, not comparing rich places to poor ones at a snapshot. The multilevel model ties births to current residence, which has limitations (some women may have moved since giving birth).
Even if you take the pure migration reading, and I don't think you should, it leads to the same policy destination. If fertile women are leaving declining regions for Seoul, then improving the economic prospects of those regions reduces the outflow, which slows the fertility loss. The migration story and the spatial deprivation story both point toward balanced regional development as the lever that matters.
But the evidence suggests something more than a sorting effect. The widening of the gap predicts lower fertility after controlling for individual characteristics (age, education, homeownership, employment) within the same districts over time. Not just about who moves, it's about what happens to the people who stay.
I would think this is like how loss of stable male employment lowers fertility, and I expect this to be the confounding variable here, or something like it..
You mentioned that since fertility dropped about equally in all groups of women (educated or not, employed or not), this means increased education and employment aren't causes?
I disagree here
This is like how more women employment harms stay at home moms chances through reducing their opportunity for marrying a man with enough income to support a family
Meaning, the drop in fertility could be because of those things (education and employment), but it is distributed across groups because one group( educated) reduces the opportunities for another group (less educated), so the drop seems even
Women's employment is linked with higher, not lower, male income - the countries with more employed women have increasing male salaries over time. Some stats on this here:
Reading this, one big problem is the lack of causally informative data
Too much confounding everywhere
Nordic countries aren't richer because of higher female participation, they are richer because of other factors, and those other factors made it easier to increase participation in workforce
You mentioned how inflation fell between 1990 and 2010, well women participation in the US didn't increase, it already reached a plateau in the 90s
Your point about single income household is that the other got richer, well...that is the same as them getting poorer, living standards issue is a relative one for most people, so the problem still stands> women in the workforce made it harder to live as single income household and hence made it harder to be stay at home mom.
As for women sharing power with men, I don't find that surprising, because that actually benefits women. After all, when men income rises, women get married more and get to have more kids!, women have easier lives when men income rises (women lives improve more by male income rises than their own income rising), but when we track how income rises for women causally affect society, it is typically not positive (in one study, their kids even starved more! Because of the decline in marriage)
It is easy to think about, even if workplaces are somewhat gender segregated, obviously many women displaced men from certain jobs. The income increase happened due to other factors, despite the increase in women participation (also, young men incomes seem to have fallen or stalled, part of why marriage is delayed)
For the few causally informative studies that exist, women participation reduces fertility
Are these TFR calculations based on location of residence, or birth? If it's the latter, wouldn't this simply be a result of migration from poorly performing economically regions into Seoul?
Great question!
The spatial panel uses crude birth rates per district with two-way fixed effects, so it's tracking whether changes in deprivation predict changes in fertility within the same district over time, not comparing rich places to poor ones at a snapshot. The multilevel model ties births to current residence, which has limitations (some women may have moved since giving birth).
Even if you take the pure migration reading, and I don't think you should, it leads to the same policy destination. If fertile women are leaving declining regions for Seoul, then improving the economic prospects of those regions reduces the outflow, which slows the fertility loss. The migration story and the spatial deprivation story both point toward balanced regional development as the lever that matters.
But the evidence suggests something more than a sorting effect. The widening of the gap predicts lower fertility after controlling for individual characteristics (age, education, homeownership, employment) within the same districts over time. Not just about who moves, it's about what happens to the people who stay.
Really interesting piece and it makes me wonder how this links to growing rural/urban economic disparities in the U.S.
Interesting...
I would think this is like how loss of stable male employment lowers fertility, and I expect this to be the confounding variable here, or something like it..
You mentioned that since fertility dropped about equally in all groups of women (educated or not, employed or not), this means increased education and employment aren't causes?
I disagree here
This is like how more women employment harms stay at home moms chances through reducing their opportunity for marrying a man with enough income to support a family
Meaning, the drop in fertility could be because of those things (education and employment), but it is distributed across groups because one group( educated) reduces the opportunities for another group (less educated), so the drop seems even
Women's employment is linked with higher, not lower, male income - the countries with more employed women have increasing male salaries over time. Some stats on this here:
https://darbysaxbe.substack.com/p/has-feminism-been-bad-for-men
Sorry for the late reply, I just saw this
Reading this, one big problem is the lack of causally informative data
Too much confounding everywhere
Nordic countries aren't richer because of higher female participation, they are richer because of other factors, and those other factors made it easier to increase participation in workforce
You mentioned how inflation fell between 1990 and 2010, well women participation in the US didn't increase, it already reached a plateau in the 90s
Your point about single income household is that the other got richer, well...that is the same as them getting poorer, living standards issue is a relative one for most people, so the problem still stands> women in the workforce made it harder to live as single income household and hence made it harder to be stay at home mom.
As for women sharing power with men, I don't find that surprising, because that actually benefits women. After all, when men income rises, women get married more and get to have more kids!, women have easier lives when men income rises (women lives improve more by male income rises than their own income rising), but when we track how income rises for women causally affect society, it is typically not positive (in one study, their kids even starved more! Because of the decline in marriage)
It is easy to think about, even if workplaces are somewhat gender segregated, obviously many women displaced men from certain jobs. The income increase happened due to other factors, despite the increase in women participation (also, young men incomes seem to have fallen or stalled, part of why marriage is delayed)
For the few causally informative studies that exist, women participation reduces fertility