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Working Papers, No. 2025-26, December 2025 Crossref
Fertility and Family Labor Supply

We study how fertility decisions interact with labor supply and human capital accumulation of men and women. First, we use longitudinal Danish register data and tax reforms to show that increases in wages of women decrease fertility while increases in wages of men increase fertility. Second, we estimate a life-cycle model to quantify the importance of fertility adjustments for labor supply and long-run gender inequality. Wage elasticities of women are more than 10% lower if fertility cannot be adjusted. Finally, we show that the long-term consequences of human capital depreciation around childbirth are an important driver of the long-run gender wage gap in the model.


Working papers are not edited, and all opinions and errors are the responsibility of the author(s). The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago or the Federal Reserve System.

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