After East and West Germany reunited in 1990, fertility rates in the East dropped sharply when employed women elected to stay in the labor force rather than risk losing their jobs permanently.
Despite some signs of improvement by 1995, East German fertility rates have stayed at an extremely low level since the fall of 1991--well below the rates in the West--causing concern about a shrinking labor force in the future.
These are among the findings by James Witte (IPR-Sociology) after analyzing data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, which has surveyed more than 4000 East Germans annually since 1990 on a group of variables that include labor force participation and fertility histories.
Witte's analysis attributes much of the steep drop in fertility rates--40% between 1990 and 1991 alone--to the personal economic insecurity of East German women. He points out that by the fall of 1991, the East German economy had lost an estimated 2.4 million jobs and by the end of 1992, the total decline in employment exceeded 35% of the preunification labor force.
Even worse, unemployment for East German women aged 18-35 increased 50% between 1991 and 1992. "Thus for many East Germans, economic uncertainty was replaced by the certainty of unemployment," Witte said.
Among those who did bear children, Witte found fertility much more likely for women who are out of the labor force or unemployed, and who also share a household with an employed partner, than for women who work in full-time jobs. This was also true for women with regular part-time rather than full-time jobs. The sociologist says these findings are consistent with a popular hypothesis that unemployed women face lower opportunity costs than their employed counterparts and are thus more likely to bear a child.
Amid signs that East Germany's economy is on the road to recovery, Witte thinks "it is plausible to expect that many births were simply postponed and not altogether foregone."
However, the government faces a delicate balance between trying to improve current employment opportunities for women and not reducing the overall size of its future labor force. To prevent any such measures from exacerbating the existing gender inequality in the labor market, Witte recommends that policymakers make extra efforts to help women reintegrate into the paid labor force if they have interrupted their careers to have children. Steps also should be taken to enable women to combine childrearing and employment outside the home by providing adequate and affortable childcare as well as more opportunities for career-oriented part-time jobs, he says.
This study appears in the current issue of NUPR and is available as an IPR working paper for $5.00.
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