Anticipatory Fertility

Abstract

We study fertility responses to employment shocks using unique Hungarian administrative data linking firm-level mass layoff and closure events to individual-level birth and abortion records. We show that the main fertility response occurs in anticipation and differs by shock type. The number of conceptions leading to births increases in the year preceding a mass layoff (when maternal employment protection is available), but not before a firm closure (without employment protection). We interpret this result as evidence of anticipatory fertility behavior: women tend to schedule childbirth when job loss can be avoided.