Regional child care availability and fertility decisions in Spain

Abstract

In this paper I explore two hypotheses: (1) Formal childcare availability for children under 3 has a positive effect on fertility; and (2) Formal childcare availability has different effects across contexts, according to the degree of adaptation of social institutions to changes in gender roles. Event history models with regional fixed effects are applied to data from the European Community Household Panel (1994-2001). The results show a significant and positive effect of regional day care availability on both first and higher order births, while results are consistent with the second hypothesis only for second or higher order births.