TY - JOUR
AU - Mencarini, Letizia
AB - Fertility rates in contemporary Europe have reached dramatically low levels. In light                 of this we are interested in the extent to which childbearing events may worsen                 individuals’ material well-being. Using a sample of women drawn from the                 European Community Household Panel Survey, we make a comparison of the impact of                 childbearing on well-being using a welfare-regime classification. Recognizing that                 poverty status is a poor proxy for well-being, we also derive several measures of                 well-being that are multidimensional in nature. These measures are referred to as                 deprivation indices and avoid the poor/non-poor dichotomy. We provide descriptive                 statistics of poverty status and deprivations indices, as well as an analysis of a                 more causal nature, the latter consisting of a Difference-in-Differences estimator                 combined with Propensity Score Matching techniques (DD-PSM). We find that                 independently of how well-being is defined, childbearing events never have a                 positive impact on individuals’ material well-being. But our estimates are                 largely consistent with welfare-regime theory: women in the social-democratic                 welfare states suffer the least as a result of childbearing, whereas women in                 conservative and Mediterranean states suffer significantly more. For the liberal                 welfare regime the results are more mixed, and depend on the definition of well-being.
TI - Childbearing and well-being: a comparative analysis of European welfare regimes
JO - Journal of European Social Policy
DO - 10.1177/0958928705057262
DA - 2005-11-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/childbearing-and-well-being-a-comparative-analysis-of-european-welfare-LQguogbHaM
SP - 283
EP - 299
VL - 15
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -