Immigrant supply of marketable child care and native fertility in Italy

Abstract The availability of child-care services has often been advocated as one the instruments to counter fertility decline observed in many high-income countries. In recent past, large inflows low-skilled migrants have substantially increased supply services. this paper, we examine if immigration actually affected exploiting natural experiment occurred Italy 2007, when a inflow migrants—many them specialized child care—arrived unexpectedly. With difference-in-differences method, show that immigrant female workers native births by number ranges roughly from 2% 4%. We validate our result implementation an instrumental variable approach and several robustness tests, all concluding increase women positively fertility.