Childbearing and well-being: a comparative analysis of European welfare regimes

Abstract

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.