SUMMARY We study the effect of a reduction in employment protection on workers’ fertility decisions. Using data from the Italian Labor Force Survey for 2013–18, we analyse how the propensity to have a child has been affected by the 2015 labour market reform dubbed the ‘Jobs Act’, which reduced employment protection for employees of larger firms while leaving small firms essentially untouched. We take a Difference-in-Differences identification approach and compare the change in fertility decisions of women employed in large firms with that of women in small firms. We find that the former’s probability of having a child is 1.4 percentage points lower. A battery of robustness checks confirms this finding. The effect also holds when possible sorting issues are accounted for by an instrumental variable approach. We document substantial heterogeneous effects by age, marital status, parity and geographical area as well as by education and earnings. Our findings suggest the potential unintended consequences on fertility that labour market reforms introducing greater flexibility may have by heightening career insecurity.

中文翻译：

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就业保护和生育决定：《意大利就业法》的意外后果

总结 我们研究了减少就业保护对工人生育决定的影响。使用 2013-18 年意大利劳动力调查的数据，我们分析了生育倾向如何受到 2015 年劳动力市场改革（称为“就业法案”）的影响，该改革减少了对大公司员工的就业保护，同时留下了小公司企业基本未受影响。我们采用差异中的差异识别方法，比较大公司女性和小公司女性在生育决策方面的变化。我们发现前者生孩子的概率要低1.4个百分点。一系列稳健性检验证实了这一发现。当可能的排序问题通过工具变量方法来解释时，这种效果也成立。我们记录了年龄、婚姻状况、平等和地理区域以及教育和收入的显着异质性影响。我们的研究结果表明，引入更大灵活性的劳动力市场改革可能会加剧职业不安全感，从而对生育率产生意想不到的后果。