Resources, aspirations and first births during the Great Recession

Many studies show that labor market uncertainties are important predictors of the postponement of parenthood. While most existing studies investigate the consequences of the deterioration of employment conditions in absolute terms, in this paper I test the hypothesis that relative changes in occupational conditions affect childbearing choices. In particular, building on the Easterlin Hypothesis of resources and aspirations I investigate how intergenerational mobility among American men and women during the Great Recession affected their chances of becoming parents. Using respondents' labor market trajectories from the PSID 2003-2017 data, I show that when both men and women hold an occupational position as prestigious as that held by their parents when they were growing up, they are more likely to have a first child than when they hold a downward-mobile job. However, men and women differ in how this process is moderated by aggregate labor market conditions.