Editors’ Introduction

Abstract

This volume contains the papers presented at the conference “Female Labour Market Behaviour and Fertility: Preferences, Restrictions, Behaviour,” held in April 1989 at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute in The Hague. It is often suggested that the increased labour force participation of women in the West has played an important role in reducing fertility and that fertility may continue to decrease if the growth in female labour force participation persists. However, the economic and socio-demographic literature indicates that this causality is not as evident as many people believe. This means that we cannot be sure that measures aimed at creating better opportunities for women to combine parenthood and paid labour will actually influence fertility and if they do, what the influence will be. In order to be able to answer questions such as those regarding the effects of policy measures, further theoretical and empirical interdisciplinary research will have to be carried out into the relationship between female labour force participation and fertility. The workshop aimed to contribute to this research.