Female Employment and Reproductive Behavior in Italy

In Italy in 2011, the employment rate for women between the ages of 25 and 54 was 64%, compared with an average of almost 76% in the EU-27. Furthermore, in the EU the total employment rate was 64.2%, with women at 58.2% - while in Italy the total employment rate was 57.2% and only 46.7% for women (Eurostat). Female employment performance in Europe is worse than the male one, but data shows in Italy this gap is significantly larger. According to ISTAT, the lack of family support services (kindergartens, nursery schools, etc.) is an obstacle to the entry into the labor market for nearly 500,000 unemployed women. In Italy, less than 1.4% of the GDP is allocated to households' contributions, services and tax deductions: far lower than 1.8% of the other low fertility countries in OECD. An additional potential obstacle comes from Nora Federici’s study (dated 1980s), which indicates that among the causes of the already substantial reduction in fertility, the objective necessity for women to choose between work and family plays a large role. This study hypothesizes a reverse relationship between feminine work and fertility, and this relationship has since found various experimental confirmations. Is this relationship still working, in this new millennium undergoing heavy changes in the world of work? And if it is, does it work in the same way for all women? Some recent remarks suggest discordant behaviors: for example, a recent survey showed a greater employment of female graduates with children than those without children and women with lower or lower grades. This shows that the study of fertility, as well as of its determinants, must try to understand many different mechanisms. This essay (concerning the relationship between female occupation and fertility by age group) is a preliminary analysis to a much more complex and ambitious study, the completion of which will involve numerous analyzes of data from different sources - but already the results provide food for thought.