Labour Force Participation and Fertility Decisions of Italian Women: The Role of Education

This paper uses data from the 1993 Survey of Household Income and Wealth of the Bank of Italy in order to estimate a reduced form purist model of female fertility and labour force participation. In particular, we focus our attention on the effect of formal education on both fertility and labour force participation behaviour. Our estimates show that education raises both the probability of giving birth and that of participating in the labour market. The first can be explained in terms of the prevalence of income over substitution effects, due to higher wages for better educated women and to the access to expensive private childcare, whereas the second in terms of the higher value of time for women with higher education.