It is, however, not clear whether changing fertility patterns had an impact on female employment behavior.
Therefore, to implement relevant actions to increase work incentives, we must better understand individuals' preferences for work, how they differ among groups, and how tax and benefit reforms actually affect households, their income distribution, and their employment behavior (Altman, 2001).
Unlike in Italy, no polarization pattern in fertility and employment behaviors was observed.
Our paper also has an important methodological contribution as it demonstrates that one should account for the unobserved person-specific characteristics which jointly affect women's fertility and women's employment behaviors.
A polarization in women's fertility and employment behaviors is hence a clear feature of the Italian setting (see also Saurel-Cubizolles et al. 1999; Gutiérrez-Domènech 2004 for the older Italian cohorts).
Conception was measured 7 months before birth, i.e., at a point at which the great majority of women are aware that they are pregnant, and after which this knowledge may influence their subsequent employment behaviors.
In order to control for the time-constant unobserved characteristics of women, in the second step we modeled fertility transitions jointly with employment transitions allowing for a correlation between the unobserved person-specific characteristics affecting fertility and employment behaviors (e.g., Lillard et al. 1995; Lillard and Panis 1996).
This may suggest that conditions for work and family reconciliation are not the only country-specific factor affecting women's fertility and employment behaviors; and that women's employment may be an important facilitator of family formation in countries with longer histories of women's labor force participation, where women are accepted as income providers.
Nevertheless Professor Autor and other economists conclude that the benefits affect employer behavior because the employment relationship is exactly that: a relationship between employer and employee.
All youth were queried about their substance use behavior (alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, illicit hard drug use) and individual-level risk factors (school involvement, employment, self-esteem, level of externalizing behaviors).
Mother's employment, disruptive behaviors, child's language, and intellectual ability did not predict total needs.
